Digital Contact Centre Platform (DCCP) with Sree Yeggina

[mark]: 1:18
today's guest is from the united states she's a global director of sales readiness at microsoft you can find links to her bio social media et cetera in the show notes for this episode welcome to the show Sree

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 1:30
thank you mark i'm really excited to be on the show thanks for the opportunity

[mark]: 1:35
good to have you on here and it's a great topic where now we're going to be discussing the digital contact enter platform today which is something that seems to be more and more involved in so i'm excited to talk to you

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 1:49
likewise i mean this is one of the most happening topics in service space so yeah i'm happy and excited to share my thoughts on the subject

[mark]: 1:58
i like it now before we get started ways like to find out food family and fun what do they need to you everything you kind of do outside of microsoft

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 2:07
well i live in seattle with my family i have two elementary school kids akil and ada they are you know nine and seven years old so if i'm not working my life use usually you order wolves around them i love taking pictures of every day things and i'm quite active on instagram it's mis s pastor

[mark]: 2:30
nice

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 2:30
um i cook occasionally my favorite food is indian food of course and we have this dish called brian so i love that yeah

[mark]: 2:41
what's in it what's in the dish

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 2:43
um you can make it with the meat or just vegetables you know with vegetables we usually made it our family thing to make chicken biliani every sunday

[mark]: 2:54
nice

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 2:55
so that's the time look forward to it you know and i enjoy making it for them so it's a weekly thing

[mark]: 3:05
i love that idea like the family traditions you know i got a young

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 3:07
yeah

[mark]: 3:08
family as well and putting those things in so they expect you know things to be coming up so good how

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 3:12
that's right

[mark]: 3:12
did how did you how did you or what the path you went on to ultimately be working for microsoft

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 3:21
well i've been in the space really since two thousand and six when we used to have you know instead of dynamic was to call his as microsopciarum right out of college i joined my first job this was with an employer then in forces and i started working on version three dot o right and since then i've been working with every single version of sarum and now dynamics three sixty five it's really i come from consulting background i've worked and implemented the solution for many of our towers you know across many industries so i'm passionate about the product what we can do with it how we can solve the business challenges and the value right it has it can provide to the customers and so my journey with mitrosov started about two and a half years back i come from partner channel one of our partners power objects and my previous job is to work with several of our customers and enable me more part of it right is to help them understand how can they adapt to these new product innovations products change at such a fast pace and so it's really important to slow down and help them understand value right and so started enjoy get and that's how i am in my current rule enable ment is really the focus of what i do but now my customers or audience rather are my field sellers right

[mark]: 4:56
right

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 4:57
focus area for me is service right and it's an extension of what i used to do it helps me follow my passion which is the technology which is to help me sellers understand the value and acceltrate their opportunities

[mark]: 5:12
yeah yeah exciting so as we unpack the digital context into platform i often get asked with you now customers is this a new category that microsofters is getting into especially with the nuance acquisition we're seeing the voice channel come out last november

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 5:30
right

[mark]: 5:31
and of course this a lot of investments in the last years around omney channel where chat enters that mix but when i just

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 5:38
right

[mark]: 5:39
i went back to some of my old presentations that i've presented over the years career and i had a slide here showing where microsoph did get started with the context center space which was in two thousand and five they had a thing called a customer care framework or c c f and two thousand in tenant became customer cericcelerator or c c

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 6:00
yes

[mark]: 6:00
a then we had c c d the contact center desk top and around two thousand twelve ish unified service desk in twenty fourteen and now we have the it'll contact in a platform in twenty twenty two so it's been a long journey for microsoft in this space

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 6:15
it has been it has been and i wasn't aware that we've started this journey way back in two thousand five so i'm actually grateful you know to you for bringing that perspective but yes for us it's not really something new you know in terms of innovation it's an extension of what we have in place and what i mean by that is you know only channel as a i add in is has been around for about three to four years now right but we always played in that ditch to channel space now we are just and you know extending that functionality by saying hey you can also light up a traditional and very common channel which is tealyfony channel and by doing so we are in a way you know helping organize tiens realize a lot of value right because that telephony infrastructure itself there are many many technologies that come together to help organizations light up telephony channel were making it easy it's simple step up you know for them it's like though it's analogue channel we treated a part with digital channels

[mark]: 7:33
what was the thinking around calling it a platform as and rather than just you know calling it ditte contact all the all in one contact center that we've seen in

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 7:43
right

[mark]: 7:43
the park so what was the decision around calling it a platform

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 7:49
that's a great question so if you observe we packaged or we launched one channel voice or used to refer to this as all in one digital contact center way back in our mumbertwen wendy one now it's slightly broader if you look at it it's not a product really it's a platform multiple solution areas come together you know from bap space we can cat it to the act a customer engagement center eatum as well as contact and apes the you know modern workplace comes together to help that say agents collaborate with anybody any expert within the organizer and so the u cast unified communications as a service comes together with the help of modern work place and sure itself it's lost you know there are multiple use case is that could be addressed by leveraging asurmicrosorbices itself but quite commonly right when we talk about telephony channel as our powers are carrier peace telephony component right organizations come to us and they can purchase sultry numbers local numbers or simply bring their own existing carriers so that is one piece of it but it's a lot more than that what as can do and last but not is the shiny new acquisition that we have made recently nuance right nuance is a leader in conversational a space and so that itself new answers elf brings many many offerings to the table so depending upon where organizations are in terms of their transformation journey they can pick and choose you know component and it's really not all or nothing it's it's all a cart day or we can you know think of these as many roads reaching our destination as opposed to one road leading to one destination so yeah it's a platform um yeah flexible open and you know quite secure platform

[mark]: 9:53
so when we when we look at the market and you look at what people do in the coal center space you know setting up a coal center often is just the scenarios that have been created around you know they've gone out and bought best in class they've bought best in class i v as system or best in class chart system or best in class case management really is the d c c p allowing a bit more control or integration surface for organizations to really go you know part of getting best in classes for everything we've created a spegitti of stuff you know and we've got to make them talk to each other i assume that with the platform there's a lot more out of the box integration available across the spread of touch points whether it's hominy whether its voice whether it's your case management whether it's portal you know interaction et cetera i assume that that's one of the goals microsopht is kind of allowing a simplification of that landscape for customers

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 10:58
yeah that's right absolutely right though it is best in class organizations do have to stitch these best in class solutions together multiple integrations involved that drives their operational cost and most importantly more often than not these players are on different platforms and different clouds and that pens up you know scope to lot of security of fraud and other vulnerabilities so what we're trying to do is just as you mentioned we are trying to make it simple for our customers yes there are out of box integrations i'll give you an example sarum or customer engagement centre right an agent who is leveraging dynamic customers service would be able to easily collaborate with any experts who might or team of experts you know within the organizations to provide the best outcome to customers and now that integration between you know business applications and modern workplace right and another example would be asher communication services which in itself is a platform right so if there is a beautiful integration between that as well as you know cool customer service where you wouldn't know that under the covers its azure customers super chase our voice channel simply you would be able to acquire new numbers from dynamics inter face so you wouldn't see that seams or different solution areas is becoming seamless and in the future we we have plans to integrate nuance with our customers service saps area as well right and so that that's going to help us elevate our value prop and you know message as well better it's coming for us very soon

[mark]: 12:52
how much are you seeing like you know what i saw come out last november and what of you know trial and news since then and and i have noticed that when engaging with customers i get very excited is around the whole voice space and particularly a i and voice and how you know you now have this m a i in the middle of a conversation that is assisting the the the agent to engage whether it be you know auto transcription of notes identifying action items like i will send you this i'll set up an appointment to tasks et cetera extracting those out and then other smart things like you know a specific brands mentioned or did the person calling switch languages even as i used a word from another language and so some these are some of the models that i have seen working and of course when you show that to a co center operator they're just like who how much time will that save me like how the impact of it you know i've been even you know on that voice channel aft the core being able to go back and saying actually this is you know what was what did i actually say or what was my actual commitment and being able to you know use the play head and go backwards and forwards like years ago i worked in bank in industry and we were of course quizzed very heavily and trained heavily on when you all calls are recorded and if there was ever an issue around a call recording back then you have to you know what was the time of the call what was the phone number you calling what was the phone calling from and that had to be sent off as a ticket to it and 

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 14:40
right

[mark]: 14:40
it would go and roll through all the lot and find that exact little clip you know of the audio and then so we're talking about a multi da process back then and

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 14:51
that's right

[mark]: 14:52
of course now inside case management we've got all that data lit up in real time against the call what a customer's saying is that you're seeing from you know seeing this from microsoft what's the impact even

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 15:09
no it's it's phenomenal you know what we are able to do the multiple things that you mentioned sparked my interest and i would like to elaborate on that right number one is a i models so everything that we have built as part of agent inter face right there are many i models like there is a smartessis there is real time sentiment analysis all of these are built ground up okay and they are they are highly accurate because they are trained with our own propriety for sparry data

[mark]: 15:39
yes

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 15:39
right the differencation that we have here is it doesn't matter on which channel you know our agents are engaging and customers it could be a life chat it could be facebook water or it could be on an analogue channel like voice all of these models that are built as part of agent in the face they work consistently on all interactions all channel interactions that's something you know that we can probably claim that it's very rare market right because typically you have third party telephone provides like avasorciscos integrating with you know customer engagement censure and so the experience for agent is not con consistent when we talk about that actual inter face and everything else working consistently that's number one number two is you mentioned about conversational a right like first of all it used to be i think even today there are a lot of contact centers who actually employ quality analyst whose whole job is to go back and listen to those called recordings to make sure if agents are let's say talking or listening to customers more or following certain you know how do i make making sure the quality of the call is better

[mark]: 17:05
yes

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 17:05
or making sure the customers satisfactio is high right and so that's a very it's extremely exhausting job because it's not humanly possible to go through those recordings you know manually to identify the sentiment has tipped so right and so we've put a i at work to do that very same thing i doesn't trust i doesn't need you know manual anything so what happens is it is so powerful it can go through these called recordings and identify those tips sentiment tips so if i'm a supervisor i would be able to look across all the conversations coming from every single channel and identify that in a voisture this particular agent had a conversation with a couple of customers and the sentiment that is has gone down which is less than average sentiment let me go ahead and take a click down into that conversation and when i really do that i can see that you know visually that you look if you imagine this as a recording as a time line i can see that as a red mark because that is they've been a sentiment and so i can listen to it just go to that place and listen okay what went there right sometimes the reason why the sentiment probably went down is not because of something that agent has done maybe because customer is really not happy about the price of a product or a service as compared to the competition so these are some of the things that a supervisor or quality analyst can easily figure it figure out and so i would always say this when we talk about insights we have you know world class insights built it every step right as part of our solutions and especially when we talk about service organizations no service organization is going to be perfect right there's always going to be rude to improve and shift and adjust the business to understand the customer experiences and to be able to make take those actions right actions at the right time right do so that's exactly what we do we help decifer that humangus contact center volumes and point out wheren exactly can supervise as improve age and efficiency or operational efficiency and just keep up with overall customer experience right

[mark]: 19:37
so i know that you know microsofthas announced that they're partnering with organizations like genesis and nice and things like that and and they can all work with with the digital contact enter platform but

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 19:52
right

[mark]: 19:52
will it be possible or is it possible now in your opinion to do let's say we had to stand up a cool center tomorrow let's say that'll give a scenario in australia a common scenario whereas we have bush fires and a new emergency response needs to be set up for an area go et cetera might be the case in that scenario to sit up let's say twenty five to fifty person call center could you have that entirely running now on microsoft stack

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 20:23
yes absolutely there are few new answers when it comes to hey it all depends on what what exactly is the customer looking for because even within mice soft we have different solutions we can offer right if it is it all goes back to let's say i would compare this as what is the function of that son who is attending those calls or you know serving those customers you know an agent or a supervisor is that agent required to serve multi customers at the same time or attend to high call volumes does that supervisor need ability to barge or whisper or have that wholistic over view of that reporting are you know ability to look across all the conversations at real time to make sure all the conversations sentiment is up so things like that we have already built now the ground up but there might be some scenarios where maybe the agent is doing a back office kind of work and you know they are here team shop teams itself has solution contact center solution microsophteams where the agent inter face in this case would be microsoph teams so we have different combinations in types of solutions it really depends on what customer needs it requires a little bit of digging into to understand and position you know digital contact center was modern work place but yes absolutely do you question

[mark]: 22:05
so when you've you've used modern workplace a few times and just for the listeners if they're not certain you're specifically many in those out cases teams right microsoff teams

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 22:14
that's right that's right

[mark]: 22:15
yeah just because you know sometimes the individuals listening to the show don't necesarily know that these new answers of how the back offers names

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 22:25
modern work place is a broader now solution arian but in contact centers so one of the unique differencations we have is we leverage teams for that collaboration ax aspect right think about it you know even before pandemic a lot of these contact centers used to be il you know we set up in buildings where agents used to sit beside each other and one of the things that is really important is that swivel chair collaboration right like agents talk to each other and they just figure out some answers which you you can't build that kind of knowledge in a day and can't capture that everything like whatever happens in that conversation in actual knowledge space but compandemic can even post pan make a lot of contact centers they've shifted their work to remote and agents lost that ability to collaborate and so that's what we're trying to solve like we are making it easy for agents who are working and serving customers on any channel that could be let's say one agent let's say i'm an agent i'm working with five different custom mars on different engagement channels it doesn't matter my a model is so powerful it can identify okay what's the intent of each of these conversations and also bubble up suggestions to me saying that hey there is a team of experts who can help you they are on teams all that you need to do from within your inter face is just send them a message we call it team swarming and anybody who's available can come and collaborate and just provide me an advice like serve the customer so that is really powerful so yes i say moran workplace i specifically mean microsoft teams

[mark]: 24:13
and of course that functionality of that swarming you know it eliminates that need to be in the same room to the you know

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 24:20
exactly

[mark]: 24:20
what we used to see traditionally which is which is amazing so let's let's talk about nuance and the acquisition made there and i've been able to interesting some of the things that you find out so

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 24:33
right

[mark]: 24:34
as an for example drug and naturally speaking i think it might have been called years ago which was a dictation thing which became bigger than medical industry you know for doctors to dictate their notes and things like that i didn't realize that that was part of nuance which i assumed it means it's part of microsophs and so that was just a little you know someone said to me one day i talked about new one and i said oh that you know i know that dictation to

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 24:59
right

[mark]: 24:59
that aside nuance brings a lot to the mix you know the biometrics piece on identifying somebody you know you pretty much can eliminate up to three minutes of validation time right depending

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 25:13
exactly

[mark]: 25:14
on what it is you know you know what's your mother's maiden name data birth you know your dress all that kind of stuff that we need to identify in you know i was just recently in a demo with one of the nuance team and i was the person calling in in the demo and before i even finished my sentence asking what my question was and the similar and we're doing and was in the financial sector so i was asking about the availability of funds to my bank account because i had to share transaction coming up before i could even conclude the sentence on his side of it had already given the green tick and said we mark is who he says he is right and and then he spooked my phone number and then he came in as a fake caller and i identified that hey this person the number checks out you know who says he is checks out but of course he was a fraudulent or a bad actor involved now that type of stuff that is tangible time savings in a cool center as well as not only time saving for the agent the experience for the customer is so much better when when the call gets answered and there's a rich context around you know engaging it's you know who i am you know who my account you know in this case my bank accounts are you don't have to ask me any of those questions that kind of the agent can already start getting up to speed before

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 26:40
that's right

[mark]: 26:41
customers finished question i think that's a game changer what are the what ones do you see that that new once will bring to the table where ye will be integrated over the next you know the month it what excites you about what new i p microsofp now will bring into the d c c p environment

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 27:03
nuance his phenomenal like i mention now ance itself brings a lot to the table but the thing that i'm really excited about is the gatekeeper right what you just mention it is able to identify every single end customer with their unique voice print and that a model is proprietory to new ones right they are the leader in that space there's no other competitor who can do that so even if my bile twin calls they can figure out that it's it's a fraudster who is trying to you know pass away as a customer so that i think is phenomenal two things right number one as it tremendously brings down the amount of time it takes for a customer to get authenticated right the estimate time in some cases is even point five seconds right the moment the customer says hello keeper can authenticate that it's the customer and scrip all the questions right they do not need to again go back and ask what's your phone number what's no all of that is taken care number two is front prevention especially important when it comes to regulated industries like financial services or public secture so that's going to be game changing and nuance itself they become with twenty five years of experience in conversational a space and it's not just any experience they have this specific industry as well as what people experience like you mentioned dragon ambions is very specific you know health care industry experts that they have but in bazar space we are very excited about the gateky an we are and sometime in the future nuan's digital engagement platform but you asked me a question about road map i will not be able to confirm anything like in terms of exact dates because we don't have them yet but i can say this

[mark]: 29:01
of course

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 29:02
very soon we have we will have integration that seamless integration between you and i we are as well customers service which is dynamics customers service that is going to come first followed by gatekeeper and you know digital contact center dynamics customers service and then a few months after that we would be looking at end up and digital engagement platform and co customer service integration so that's the order or priority how we are approaching this

[mark]: 29:32
nice nice the other thing that really got my attention with with what neaudcwill bring to the table is what's going to affect i feel p v a you know power virtual agents going forward because once again because of that experience with conversational ai they when somebody asks a bot whether it be a chap but voice but doesn't matter you know as you said before no matter which which surface the individual is coming in on but

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 30:01
right

[mark]: 30:01
the power of out to understand a multi part question and in context of who's asking the question um that is mind blowing to me because you see so many chabot systems are very linear and the way you know they ask a question they're capturing the one word answer

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 30:25
that's right

[mark]: 30:26
which will then take you down a branching path where you know they get the example that

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 30:31
yes

[mark]: 30:32
that watched and listened to and around you know booking

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 30:36
yes

[mark]: 30:36
tickets on an arline hey i'm located in melbourne and i want to flow a flat queensland you know other bots would go what's your departure city i already told you that in the question

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 30:50
exactly

[mark]: 30:50
and where do you want to go to you know and i'll ask you all this kind of very not like human would right you a human would go hey you just told me in the one question to and from and and i'm looking forward to that tech all being rolled into what we have in pva and'll bring us to a new level

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 31:09
i agree with you p v by itself is going to be really powerful because now we are talking about enhancing p v or you know there's going to be integration wenpvanduns mix as well so even if you look at it is it does leverage natural language understanding um and please in that conversational in high space so a lot of people keep asking about this question that he you know that no answers here what about b v what about babpbsks going to be here and it's terrific road map so the clarity that we're trying to provide and we very soon we'll have more on this as well i went to position p v was is nuance because there's going to be a treshhold and at a very high level it's going to be based on complexity and volume right you know that we are going to come up with very clear guidance on ha this is the scenario where we should be positioning ance who as he p v because again p v can also derive anton can also take action on behalf of the customer it's really you know citizen develop a friendly technology my eight year old boy created a pa bought you know so

[mark]: 32:31
yeah yeah yeah

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 32:32
it is the ease of understanding that technology

[mark]: 32:35
exactly

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 32:35
also that matters it success so there's a lot that can offer a lot nuance nuance can you know do as but again it boils down to what is that customer looking for right so to your question nuance in itself it's phenomenal like you mentioned it can understand who the customer is and the action on behalf of the customer by identifying what exactly does the customer need even if i speak five or six sentences to the now conversational it is powerful enough to understand my asks and take action on behalf of me as a customer so it's very exciting what's coming for us

[mark]: 33:21
good Sree we run out of time over time fact it's in been so interesting talking to you i love this i love this area of technology that migrosolis investing so heavily in thank you so much for coming on before i let you go is there any kind of resources or places that you recommend people if they want to get up to speed more on even the new announcement that will be coming around d c c p where do they go

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 33:44
yeah so i would definitely watch out for ignite sessions there's one which is i think july ignite session on dississipi is really still ready to event but

[mark]: 33:57
yes

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 33:57
i'll watch out for microsoph blocks right every now and then we have there is there are three new blocks done by nuns folks recently ex in what is it that they are bringing to the table ve shared them on my linked in i wish this is more interactive than a podcast i can share the links but definitely check out blocks space the there's more coming up you know and i'm doing some partner sales boat camps one would be launched in december so if you're a partner who is listening watch out for invitations on that

[mark]: 34:31
nice

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 34:33
yeah more to come on the space

[mark]: 34:35
it's good we'll make sure we put the links in the show notes that you just mentioned so that people

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 34:38
yep

[mark]: 34:39
from their player

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 34:40
that would be great

[mark]: 34:40
can click on those links and get to them thanks again Sree

[sree_chandana_yeggina]: 34:43
of course thanks for having me have a lovely day mark thank you