live so welcome to another workflow wednesday on now with troy and today i'm super excited i get to pull in three people that have involved the third era one of our partners and two other people from third era so let me unpin my my video and you'll get to see more of them um with me are the presenters from our webinar that we held last thursday i've got brie from third era digital hi bri hi tri i've got john reynolds who leads our strategic alliances finding us key partners hi john hey troy how's it going going well and one of those partners is gee i'm not even going to attempt to say your name um but i i thank you for joining us so g say hello how's it going guys uh if you guys would do a quick intro again the whole point of this is to just kind of unpack some of the things you wish you could have got to on that webinar because we were talking about how to balance innovation and practicality as it relates to experience as relates to people on the phone versus self-serve there's so many things to talk about but i want to kind of open the mic to you if you give just a short intro for each of you so people that are jumping into this while you're doing that i'll jump onto the chat and say where people can go to get that on demand of that webinar if they missed it perfect why don't i go first my name is bran krilman i'm the director of ux ui at third era digital here we are a collective of experienced architects developers and ux ui designers and design technologists and we're super passionate about increasing productivity through exceptional servicenow experiences john do you want to go next i will happily go next yeah this is john reynolds i don't have quite the glorious introduction but i do leave as troy opened up with our alliances and channels uh ecosystem work here at uh at third era along with our corporate development strategies g over to you yeah last but not least right the same goes uh so my name is guillen g for short i run the challenge alliances here at 3c logic we are a cloud uh voice and sms platform uh and one of the things that we do very well is weave those capabilities uh into the servicenow workstream so that you can in fact create a full and comprehensive omnichannel experience not just for agents but obviously administrative as well so you can create interactive personalized call flows troy you mentioned self-service so voice cell service as well as live agent all the way through to analytics and fancy things like sentiment scoring and speech analytics so that you can understand the quality of the engagements between you and your end customers very cool for those of you that are tuning in you think of just the breadth and depth that we have in just these three speakers um one of the things they talked about on the webinar and i hope you catch it i post it in the chat the link you can register but one of the things that you guys unpacked is this concept of innovation and where to focus innovation the 70 2010 rule it's so if you guys just want to you know revisit that shortly and and talk about you know how that helps shape where we should be focusing our innovation efforts yeah maybe maybe i'll open it open it up and then you know let's uh let g and brie uh respond there but i think what i found fascinating is just how companies that we see as very innovative very progressive forward-looking companies and and how they are themselves having to strike that balance right um between you know that 70 percent of the time focused on you know what we turned horizon one in the webinar or really the the near term the practical the the space that we would often consider kind of ripe for continual improvement for um you know for for immediate modernization you know i think what those companies find like you know companies like google that really pioneered in this space is that you know those are lower cost more immediately adoptable types of enhancements that we can bring about in innovation but you can't focus all of your time in that space if you do as we called out in the webinar you know you become the xeroxes of the world you miss that you know that that opportunity that became you know digital uh in in in the photography space and so how do you you know how do you balance that that 70 offset with the you know the the next generation those kind of those immediate um of evolution of technologies and markets to that ten percent which you know really are those brand new um brand new markets brand new technologies and i you know i think what was interesting to me as we were kind of exploring how to how to approach this conversation is looking at two different spaces and you know whether we're looking and you know in in breeze case and in the in the sense of digital you know i think an area that we see is really pioneering and what you know what breed would argue is that actually a lot of the a lot of the improvements a lot of the modernization are actually kind of almost at a micro level a lot in that 70 space it's those little tunes that can really make a significant impact in terms of of experience and adoption and yet you know in g's case this this technology that's been out there for for years and years and years and we're actually seeing quite a bit of modernization geez really you know they're doing yes absolutely the you know the the routine is there but he's also really pushing that envelope and that that horizon to that 20 space as well as he kind of opened up with so um so i thought it was a good foil counter foil uh for you know on on what we maybe you know the classic perception and belief may be versus what's actually happening on the ground when you go and lift up the covers hurry i'm gonna let you go i was waiting for you to go yes trying to be polite i saw the stair happening no i'd have to echo definitely what john said around some of that 70 because i think sometimes when different things and designs are implemented there they might have been a little bit rushed so some of those 70 things might not have been as fine-tuned as they needed to be so just going back re-evaluating is what is what is there working correctly and in the way that you intended and then are the users using it in the way that you thought they would so just gathering more learnings around that 70 percent but i also think it's really important when you're adjusting that 70 to always keep your eye on the bigger picture so eventually if we phase into that 2010 what does that look like so that we're not going to change something every six months or change something every year how can we make sure that we're always thinking about that 10 while we're making changes in the 20 and 70. yeah what i would add which we didn't really cover in despite the fact that we chatted for an hour and could have kept going is you know when you look at platforms right now you're applying like servicenow you look at contact center solutions you know what they're trying to do is actually shrink the delta between that 70 category and the 10 percent right this whole idea of low code no code the entire intent behind that this digital transformation that everyone has been hearing over the last few years is how can you basically um enable your everyday average operations manager service desk manager whatever the case may be or even the cio was looking at the entire platform stack how can you make it easier to adopt maybe some of that technology that would fall in the 20 or 10 category and bring it down so it can be applied sooner and a faster means within practical day-to-day applications right so there is there is a desire and a momentum to try and make it so that you know the bleeding edge can be adopted sooner but at the same time we also have to recognize that from a practical standpoint large organizations you know one of the things that that hinders them from being able to move quickly is the fact that they've invested in perhaps at the time what was leading edge technology and getting off or migrating from or modernizing those systems is sometimes the challenge and if you become overly obsessed with the end uh point you know you fail to realize that there's perhaps very basic things you can do today that can either stretch the shelf life of those platforms or you might realize that what was a one-year implementation process can now be done in six weeks and you can still drive meaningful value without necessarily having to hit you know use those your bleeding edge technologies to get you there right so i thought i think that's something we kind of missed on in our discussion but that 70 2010 rule i mean it makes a ton of sense you just got to find out where you are in your life cycle and it may be case specific it may not be company you may not be able to look at the company in that through that lens right right there's two two thoughts that came came out of that as you guys talked about that one is your 70 percent might not be my 70 percent yeah right that if you go through different parts of the organization there's focus of the what's the business criticality for me you know in just in our microcosm right from a delivery standpoint we've got nearly 400 projects running the 70 of making sure the systems are in place to innovate and drive that well is important as a client executive i i'm really interested in what are the processes that help me reach out to find new prospects to serve my clients and help in that process of really helping them engage so my seventy percent is gonna be different than someone in delivery and and you touched on a little bit of being able to jump in and say uh especially as you get into low code no code being able to innovate on my seventy percent matters tremendously well i mean people are trying to find a platform right troy that fits everything but what they realize is it needs to be yeah a platform doesn't really simplify things but it needs to have the ability to be decentralized enough so it can cater to individual departments right i mean i know in our case you know we focus in really in that interaction layer and sometimes their pain point is that they're held hostage to technologies that cannot meet their more you know maybe advanced use cases right because the technology was bought for the organization and doesn't necessarily address the the needs of some of the you know perhaps smaller entities but that doesn't mean they're any less important right i mean your customers 14 that's the face of the organization so so that's one of the things that people struggle with and that's where the 70 2010 rule you're right you you need to look at your technology stack to understand what degree of flexibility does it rank your teams within that 70 2010 lens i don't know john agree what your thoughts are yeah you know i think there's you know the the model really i think it does allow for that specificity that you know that you're inquiring about there troy and i think you know what gc's and in that you know if you look at the two axises on on the chart that we put up you're focusing you know one axis is really certainly the technology axis and that technology is those things it should those are the things that are immediately impacting you those are the things that either a you know you're leveraging in the course of your services delivery or certainly things that you may be providing outward to to your client second is is is the market right and and the markets that you're serving and so you know are we are we are we pushing you know one way are we are we modernizing technologies are we are we opening up or we're just expanding markets you know if you look at i think even as i was going through the you know the ideation of okay well what are some representative examples of those things that are out there that were that were you know that were bleeding edge tip of the spear brand new technologies you know uh the the i think one of the more recent ones and in my case was was the tablet right when we introduced a tablet this is a brand new piece of technology we've never seen or touched or interacted with right so but what we find is a lot of those things that we see is really kind of innovative very pioneering are actually you know probably more of those 20 percenters where we just you know we took a basic um bag phone and we turned it into a flip phone that then became a smartphone right this progressive it's really more in that 20 20 where we're yeah we're opening up new industry but they're tangential to where we were right so the model certainly is intended to to to be applicable to you know where you sit in the world now you know is that relative to just your world or in a lot of cases i think we think about services delivery is that you know that's that is a that's an extension of you plus some of those other silos in the organization so you do have to kind of think broadly in that sense but you know from a practicality perspective bring that down to your world and and you know how we you know how we manage the satur so to speak of that you know that segment of the workflow that you're you're directly touching yeah right right and i think with what you're saying there practicality doesn't have to be boring it can still be innovative and when you think like sometimes you have a stakeholder that's like we have to get everyone on a tablet uh a user experience um tactic that we use as we'll ask them why five times and if they can tell us specifically why five times then we'll start to kind of flush out that problem statement but sometimes it's they've heard of another industry that switched everything to tablets and they want to be synchronized with that because they believe in that change but if you really get down to it like another example we have on lots of clients is we don't want the phone to ring anymore we don't want our help desk to be answering the phone so you say well why why why why why and then you understand no we just want to take down some of the call volume and educate our people as to where to find the knowledge articles to get the information that they need but eliminating something completely because you're trying to be innovative is not always the answer yeah that's that's a good point and i think that that segues into another question that i had kind of coming out of out of the webinar and and i think as we talked a little bit preparing for this session we talked about a little bit too is is call centers and cost centers used to be very synonymous you know it's like cost of calls was was very very prominent and i think you know with all of the digitization that we've had the fact that we aren't in a conference room to have this discussion with one camera right um that the world has changed let's talk a little bit about how you guys are seeing that transformation where where call centers are moving from a cost center to dare i say a revenue center or revenue retention center where it's really the value as is you know we're reaching our it's our touch point with our customers or clients yeah i mean i i guess i'll tackle that one real quick so i mean look but we have to at least accept that the the market itself has has fundamentally changed right we talked about last week that a lot of things now if they're not already are moving towards a subscription-based concept right um you know you might even argue you know grocery stores now are you know or at least amazon is attempting to make them sell services right and things like nature so you know and and obviously the last few years have certainly hurt the retail space now you know all of a sudden people have been accustomed to saying i can just order everything that comes to my doorstep right so why leave my house unless there's an experience involved into it but what has also resulted in it's that um you know it's it's limited the number of touch points that you can have with your customers that can create meaningful memorable events and if customers are now only as loyal as you know their subscription contract with you right then you know all of a sudden those engagements are crucial right right so yes in the past everything was measured on the basis of what's the cost of that call and you know could sell service address the same need and mitigate my costs and there's that is still a viable use case uh and there's some roi there even today that being said what you're going to find is a lot of digital interactions still result in the need for an individual a live individual and sometimes that results in a call or a live chat it doesn't really matter and it could be because the self-service tool was you know exceeded you exceeded its exit capabilities it could be that the person just got frustrated because they didn't know how to use the tool um we're finding that it's not all generation based it's across generations you know i'm a little biased here but i personally don't think that voice as a channel is the problem right we all have bad experiences we don't want to call organizations is that because the channel is fundamentally flawed or because it's never been properly applied right um and i'm of the opinion that it's never been properly applied or certainly hasn't modernized the times using your smartphone analogy john right so how many of us have been there on the call human operator yeah exactly right so and you go through that customer experience and you land on someone just have them ask you the exact same questions that that's a lack of integration between platforms and integration in the background people don't want to they don't want to know what's going on in the background and what it takes to get you the right person they just want you to get to the right person and personally i never find it more frustrating than when someone tries to hide my option to reach you right to me that's not customer service even though you've given me you're trying to encourage me to use all your other assets right right to me that is that is your your desire to avoid a cost and what you don't realize is it may cost you my my relationship with you as a customer and so that's why i don't think they're cost centers anymore you could maybe you call them retention centers right maybe that's where it's going but it costs more to acquire net new than it does um than it does to keep people yeah i agree brie or john you know i think it's what's interesting about what what she's saying i think too is you know and it's it attacks to this this notion that we've you know this that's been out here i think particularly in the service desk space of this this shift left methodology and i think what we're what we're what we're seeing is is maybe this assumption that that that was a linear progression that you know if we just if we just continue to stand this if we stand this up they will come right and and they will continue to adopt and they will adopt this stuff literally and i think if anything in the last couple of years hopefully what we've learned is that humans are not necessarily linear and and you know the the environments around us the situations that we put in the limitations on our social interactions that that maybe in fact that you know we're we're a little bit more of a of a sign curve there in terms of of our wants and needs and you know there are times when when my patients level as such and i'm perfectly willing to go through the automated menus and get to where i need to go and feel confident that's going to get there and there are times whether you know whether it's just you know the the time that i have available or just you know my mental state when i'm making that call that i know that just getting to that human that has a pleasant voice that's gonna you know what i'm actually gonna exit that with maybe just a little bit of a of a warmer feeling and and that's what i needed at the time and so you know i think it really does kind of challenge our thinking in this space and that um you know maybe we're not just just hardwired where everything's a zero and one it's you know that uh the time space and what's going on around us may actually have an influence on what type of engagement we're seeking and what we're seeking to get out of that right now i think that's such a good point john and it made me remember during the pandemic there was a furniture company i wanted the name they're blue and yellow but when you went online to uh try to contact them there was a contact button right front and center and i remember this because it was my own experience so i clicked contact us and then scrolled down to get the phone number and they had a wait time and i specifically remember their wait time was 642 hours or something just astronomical and right away i was like okay some developer got in there and then i was thinking about i was like oh my gosh from an empathy perspective they are probably slammed they're probably so behind they're trying to be as transparent as they can but it kind of had me think of it in two ways my first reaction was like this is a joke but then my next reaction was like this is exactly what's happening right now in the world and there's people on the other side of these phone calls and maybe this time i can wait on my billy bookcase and just send an email right right it's i can see the mixed reaction to that it's like 600 no way i what but like you said on people on the other side it's that's talk about overwhelm and and you know i let's let's use this kind of as as a segue into another topic i wanted to get your thoughts on in the remaining minutes we have is is we're changing the way we interact in and there's a lot of the self-serve there's a lot that we do in video there's there's a lot we can do you know kind of distance but with artificial reality and virtual reality there's there's another you know wave of innovation coming um where do you see the the ar and vr fitting in in this experience arena if you will right because i'm the one with the vr headset that could be it you know i i think it's it's an interesting space and i think you know it's it's you know is it this is this uh you know is this a byproduct again of being forced into really one mode uh and one mode only of real social interaction where you know at least you know we can see faces and have and have conversations this this this flat two-dimensional screen um you know i think that there's some there's some know interesting you know almost back to g's point earlier too when do you land the plane um you know augmented reality ar you know this is this is this is not new technology per se but you know that first that first entry into the market was ripe with a lot of challenge and i think caused a lot of backlash socially do we have the right laws in place where can you wear these where can you not what can you do when you have these things on so you know there was a lot to work through that maybe you know yep we're out there in that ten percent we've got to wait for a lot of other things to catch up before this becomes more relevant now as we're seeing and we're seeing a lot of modernization around the field service space when it comes to the ar space i think vr you know is still one of those as we've been exploring it ourselves um is one of those that it's it's still early but it's worth that ten percent of the time why because we can see this you know i think anyone that's ever put on that that headset would argue it's it's tricking the brain today and it is creating a very new type of engagement that we haven't seen before and i think it opens up ways to really reach and inspire and and show art of the possible to our clients in ways that we've never been able to do before um you know even even real time in in that conference room right there there are definitely experiences we can create in that vr space that are entirely unique to that space um so you know i think it's one where it's it's this is a very good example where it's it's worth that 10 that expiration we can see we can see the art of the possible however there is still very much a catch up to do anyone that's you know that's put on those headsets everything from just how do i how do i deliver the technology how do i onboard my clients to get into that that virtual space and then how do i captivate them while i've got them there um is is is rather fascinating but i think it is real time you know really a good example of of you know of this model in work and and how we begin to explore adoption um and use cases for our clients yeah i agree with john i'm not looking forward to you know going across a crosswalk and realizing everyone's got a headset i don't know if i might be the scrooge in the group you know my kids might you know be into it uh i know that i when i put the vr headset yeah i even though i convinced myself this is not real i i refuse to walk the end of the plank that apparently it was at the top of the 28 story building i just could not bring myself to to do it so it has definitely reached a point of reality that does trick the brain to john's point i could see it as being a phenomenal training asset um instead of having to you know do you know or conferencing and things like nature i think there's some natural evolutions there i definitely put it in the 10 category i don't think we know what the potential for vr really is i think everyone just agrees that if there's a future for it um no doubt about it now i i i can only speculate how that's gonna impact interactions customers experience and so on so forth right um you know i i can only speculate but it it's going to be an interesting evolution but it's definitely in that 10 i i don't see it being something that's going to be you know as relevant or mainstream over the coming years i think the word we should focus on too is what john said it is exploration and let's be honest with our users and our people that we haven't figured it out and we understand it's not going to be a replacement either i think that's what happens sometimes with things like that where it's like by next year every meeting will be in the metaverse and people are like wait what i don't wanna go there i'm gonna be sick so i think just like being really honest and up front like we're gonna do our best to figure it out and make sure that whatever we put forth with it makes the most sense but we need you to come along this journey with us it can't be all or nothing like take a few steps come on g walk the plank just a little bit i'll hold your hand it'll be okay but you don't have to do it every day oh there's a spider at the end so that doesn't really work for me i i love that thought of you know one it's it's kind of you know g facing your fear and i think with any innovation there's some fear there's fear change there's fear of how we experience it and and to be able to kind of take that fear and turn it into almost player whimsy and and maybe maybe that wasn't where you were headed but you know i'll push the pendulum a little bit further and say a lot of times innovation is saying why not it's it's something different it's an innovation we've found in maybe another industry or another place i mean we get so many things from gaming in this technology world how do you take that and say well let's try some things and one of the things that i've heard about often you know where that fits well is training as it relates to how do you train someone with interactions that's hard to teach in a classroom with book knowledge or you know computer brace training or other thing because you need to be able to interact but there's already things really different that'll do it for you troy in our case you can already do call transcription machine learning and ai based analytics right so everyone's working from home you can't walk the hallway you can't people can't raise their hand and ask for help there's already things that are that can be applied that are right on the cusp of that 70 20 line that you can apply today without necessarily having to think that you have to go the vr route or already start applying vr to be successful and that's the practicality reality um discussion that we had and that we're having again today is is at some point be careful not to get caught up in things that are not yet ready yeah keep an eye on it but you know you do need to operate your business today your customers are asking for services today right um and if you're if you're too far on to the future in in your tech stack and innovation you know you may not have much of a company left if if your customers are unhappy with your services in the moment right now i could bring this thing full circle you know gee you just brought up a couple of use cases if you look at where the where the 70 20 model came from right it wasn't it was an innovation innovation actually adopted it from education and in fact you know and how we learn and you know the reality says that hey you know 70 of our learning comes from doing the hard things ourselves and so you know what g is describing is just means of actually leveraging a little bit of ai right you know that force because of you know this virtual mode no longer can i can i raise my hand and ask for my team lead and get help with the question that i've got you know with the call on the line but i can leverage these more modern technologies to continue to allow me to do the hard things myself and allow me to progress faster and and become more proficient faster and so you know these two things actually dovetail together quite quite nicely when you think about it that way yeah i like that um we are at time so let me just do one one passing remark from each of you john you kind of had yours you know but be thinking i'll circle back to see if you have one bree do you have some closing thoughts i don't think so i think um if everyone can just always think about the users or your customers think about them ahead of the technology and the daily struggles that they're going through or the different things that might come up when they're going to put in that request or they're going to call you if you can just keep that empathy component there i think that's the most important yeah i like that empathy and design innovation with empathy gee yeah i mean i like a little bit of what preset i mean it's how it's how steve jobs you know garnered all his success with apple right is start with a customer work your way back don't create a technology and then go searching for where it can be applied right so you're going to quickly find that if you put yourself in the shoes of the customer or customers all of us every day you know you probably have some common pain points that you can quickly relate to like why is it so terrible when i have to reach an organization and you'd be surprised how quickly you can address some of those immediate needs and then start weaving in some of those 10 you know 2010 type innovation um you know um technologies progressively along the way while still hitting some pretty significant roi up front so it's sometimes it's taking a step out of and not looking at technology as a solution find the problem first and then figure out which technologies need to be enhanced modernized or perhaps even replaced that might be a better approach right right back to you john last call oh gosh you know i think we've we've said a lot here but i think you know as i think thematically what we keep coming back to is is this this is just you know it's a big balancing of the teeter-totter right it's a balancing of our time you know whether we're cooking out of a julia child's cookbook and do we go with the butter heavy recipe or the vegetable heavy recipe today right but you just said hey it's balanced in moderation throughout and you know it whether we're thinking about you know our end users or we're thinking about you know our users are delivering the service embrace case right and focusing on the experience on both sides of the house because when we optimize for both we optimize the whole right and uh you know in in g's case you know how we manage you know where we're spending our time where we're putting our r d efforts you know i think it's it's it's all about it's about balance it's about moderation and kind of striking the striking the sweet spot between those two and maybe it was an obvious conclusion to come to but um but it really is a it's a fun topic to go explore and and get into these very specific use cases around us enjoy the time thanks for having us awesome thank you so let me let me close this out and then i'll stop the stream thank you for joining another workflow wednesday i'm so excited i get to bring in some of my peers and and as i hope you see in my content and the things i share on linkedin on youtube that now with troy talks about what's happening right now in the business world and what's happening on servicenow and at third era we get to focus on you the business user and the business organizations are trying to figure out what's in my 70 20 and 10 where you should be innovating and so let us help you if there's any way you can reach out i'm glad to be your glue reach out i'll help you get connected with the right people and again i look forward to connecting with you next time on now with roy workflow wednesday thanks awesome