Latest / The Tech Matchmaker / Visual Knowledge Management: How Procedureflow Cuts Contact Center Training 50%
Transcript
- Gina Gibson: Welcome to the Tech Matchmaker, the show where contact center challenges meet their perfect tech match. I'm your host, Gina Gibson, and in just 15 minutes, we serve up the smartest, coolest innovation shaking up the contact center industry. Whether you're searching for your next solution or just love staying ahead of the curve, we've got the insights to keep you in the know. Let's dive in and discover what's next. I promise you it's going to be fun. Thanks for hanging out with us on the Tech Matchmaker. I hope today's spotlight sparked some fresh ideas and real solutions for your contact center. Want to dive deeper into the tech we featured? Hit up the show notes for all the links and extras and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if there's a challenge you want us to tackle, don't be shy, reach out. I'll catch you soon with more innovation, more use cases and more ways to keep your business moving forward. Good day, everybody. Today we are chatting with Dan Keddie, the Vice President of Channel Sales from Procedure Flow. Dan, welcome to the podcast and thanks for taking time to chat with us today. Dan Keddy: Yeah, thanks for having us, Junior. We're really excited to be here. Gina Gibson: Excellent. Let's start with the basic stand. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Dan Keddy: So I've been in sales for 25 plus years. Majority of my career has been in SaaS and I've worked for some of the heavyweights like Xerox and Salesforce. And then I've worked for startups like Procedure Flow, Anywhere Group and kind of always led to my talents kind of in two camps. I've either been on the channel side or I've been ⁓ leading the direct sales campaign. So I've always kind of lived in both camps. Gina Gibson: Stay curious, stay bold, and keep exploring what's next. That's great. And I always ask our guests, tell us something about yourself that we won't find on LinkedIn. Dan Keddy: I lived in Aruba for a year when I was 16. So good time to be 16 and then in the Caribbean. So yeah, I lived down that down that way. Gina Gibson: Absolutely, absolutely. Why don't you go ahead and tell us, give us your elevator pitch. What does Procedure Flow do? Dan Keddy: ⁓ Sure, what makes Procedure Flow different is, you know, we're not a traditional knowledge management platform. We focus on visual knowledge. And for a lot of folks, you know, when they think of, when you think of traditional knowledge management systems, you're thinking of text-heavy PDFs, Word docs. And what we did is we realized very early on, procedure flow has been around for about 10 years, that most people learn visually. MIT and Harvard have the argument, one of them says 70%, the other says 65, of people of the population learn visually. And what we realized was... For most people, they're looking for more than just ⁓ the PDF or the text document. They're actually looking for the answers and along with the answers, they're actually looking for guidance on how to do whatever that task or process. So what we realized was if we could take out the core message, put it into basically a visualized flow chart that gives people the guidance based on six shapes and six colors, it really helps them to address the concern because I think you'll find Gina. more and more, especially since the, you know, the entrance of AI, everyone really just wants outcomes. So inherently, if I can give you the answer, but then how to get to the outcome with that answer, I'm putting you in a much better place, whether you're an agent or using AI. Gina Gibson: And building off that, what kind of results are your customers seeing? Like, can you give us a sense of the impact in terms of numbers or metrics as far as what your typical customer might experience? Dan Keddy: I think the biggest thing that we're seeing is for organizations that are looking at like training. Let's say it took them 12 weeks to do training or six weeks to do training or even, know, maybe it takes, you know, three months. We're able to cut most of their training in half. So if you could simply imagine being able to take an agent and put them on the floor 50 % sooner. have them to proficiency that much faster. I think that's the biggest thing that we're enabling. The other part around that too is the more complex the better. So what we're finding is when if you look at our ICP, so like utilities, banking and finance and insurance. Obviously, there's a lot of self-service that goes on now with the different solutions. However, when a person hits zero or wants to get to an agent or has gotten past AI, they really want to get to that answer. So we find that by being able to be validated, curated, and verified, we're letting people get that answer right away for those more important conversations where a human really needs to kind of be involved. Gina Gibson: And it's an interesting point you bring. like, why, it's more in the complexity and I think you answered it, but why has visual knowledge management become such a critical issue for contact centers? Dan Keddy: Sure. I think what we're learning is that when you look at the average contact center agent and then you look at the advent now of AI on top of that, systems and people, it's easy for them to follow a shape that it is for them to go in and into text and actually look. Because if you think about it, if you think about an SOP, there's probably seven paragraphs, right? In that SOP, you really need three sentences. but I've got to take the time to read all seven paragraphs before I get to those answers. By actually pulling out the specifics, the chunks of knowledge you actually need and then framing them, like I mentioned before, with the six shapes and six colors, you know over time, because your mind's trained, what those colors mean, what those shapes mean, and allows you to jump to the proper conclusion, not a conclusion, that actually delivers an answer to your customer. Gina Gibson: I love that. so explain a little bit because we've talked about it. Where do you fit in? Like, how do you fit into a company's existing tech stack? Are you a learning management system? Are you a training system? Like how, where do you classify yourself or what do you integrate with? Dan Keddy: I think the big thing for us is, you I think you've had others on before in the knowledge management space. And I think a lot of us would answer the same way. Knowledge management is so broad, right? It's such a broad swath. And I would actually, you know, I would throw it out there that knowledge management for a lot of folks is document management of the 90s. They haven't really turned it into knowledge, just data, right? And I think that's the part where, you know, we kind of, we stand out as kind of a true knowledge management solution in the sense that Gina Gibson: you Dan Keddy: when we meet with a customer and we're rolling out procedural flow for the first time and we're helping them kind of map their processes and their procedures, what we're actually do is we're consolidating the data. Like I mentioned before, we're making sure it's validated, we're making sure it's curated, and we're making sure that the version is correct. And then we're taking that data and through our process, we're actually turning it into knowledge. And I think that's the interesting piece, because I think if you, and I'm sure you've had many of these conversations, people believe they've got knowledge, but when you actually sit down and break it down with them, it's silos of data. They haven't actually taken that step to enable that information to become knowledge. And I think that's where we stand out compared to a lot of others. And I think that's the biggest piece for us is we really are kind of that traditional knowledge base. I hate to throw it out there and I hate to say it because it's buzzword bingo right now, but it is true when procedure flows implemented properly, it does become that single source of truth. Gina Gibson: I like that. Where do you see, just kind of circling back to the verticals in your RCP, where do you see Procedureflow making the biggest impact? Like is there a sweet spot industry? You mentioned complex cases ⁓ or a specific use case where you guys are just crushing it. Dan Keddy: Sure. The more regulated the better we're doing, we're finding. So utilities is probably our biggest practice right now, followed by insurance. And when I say insurance, we do cover kind of the gamut property, casualty and health. One of our biggest customers is the fourth largest health insurer in the U.S. So you can just imagine probably who that is. But what we're finding is it's because when something goes wrong in a regulated industry, there's so many trip wires that happen, right? And if you don't follow the process, procedure properly. Fines can happen, know, ⁓ potentially in like a utility, someone's job could finish or someone's life could potentially be on the line. You you trip the wrong switch and something like that happens. And then we find too, a lot of times we're in the midst of a crisis. So if you think about it in terms of like the utilities, especially those poor utilities kind of across kind of Texas and Florida the last couple of years, hurricanes and major storms. If you look at kind of even last week with some of the snowstorms on the East Coast, you know, they're dealing with situations in real time Gina Gibson: Yep. Dan Keddy: And they need to have the right answer now so that they can get their constituents back up and get them able to operate with their power grid or solution or local line. Gina Gibson: Yeah, now we talked a little bit before we started recording, but tell us what's next for Procedure Flow. ⁓ Dan Keddy: Sure. Yeah, the biggest thing right now is we're leaning into the agentic API. And I think that's an important part for us. What we've realized ⁓ and what we believe to be true is that if you get your knowledge sources correct and you get them again validated and curated ⁓ and verified, I think the biggest piece there is. an AI agent, just like your human agent should be able to follow those flows. So you do the work once, but it's available to, you your either your virtual agents or your live agents. And I think that's a key piece for us. And we believe that because of using our flow charting methodology, you know, with shapes and colors, that that is an easier format for a machine to read. And therefore, you know, should deliver a much better experience from an AI perspective. Cause as you all know, I'm sure you're living this every day too, Gina, as a consultant, you're hearing about those folks that went out early on and were like, know, the CEO kind of pounded the desk and said, Hey, we got to jump on this AI thing. I don't know really what it means. I don't know how it's going to affect our business, but I don't want to fall behind. And as a result, a lot of people race to it. They implemented, but they didn't necessarily do the foundational layer work. And I think that's where procedure flow really shines is again, we come in with our partners and, and, and directly as well. And we work through kind of that mapping process. Late last year, we, we introduced a new feature called the AI process designer, and that it literally allows you to build your processes in real time using AI. So it's as simple as You you think about the process, I want a new process for vacation policy and it will spit out, you know, an actual flow charted process that you can immediately, you with some tweaks put into procedure flow and off you go, but it takes the lift away. And I think inherently we're super excited. You know, we're working through kind of our beta phases now, but we hope by the, you know, summer of this year, we'll have that out and ready for the public to be using. Gina Gibson: That's fantastic. And what a great application for startups or companies that don't have the processes in place, right? Making it easier. Can you share a quick success story with us from one of your clients? Dan Keddy: 100%. Sure, I think one of the ones that we would highlight, it's probably actually on our website, is we've done some things with MediV Blue Cross, they're on the East Coast here in Canada, we're actually Canadian, ⁓ and they were able to cut their training times by 40%, they rolled it to reduce AHT, ⁓ and again, that's health insurance, right? So think about it, someone's calling because they don't understand the coverage, right? And if any of us have ever read those documents, sometimes it's hard to find the right answer. So being able to actually get their staff up and running and proficient and out on the floor and then able to ask questions in or answer questions in a timely manner. I think the biggest thing is in, you know, with your experience, Gina and CX, we laugh about this ourselves is, you know, when you have a great experience, you tell no one. When you have a bad experience, you tell 50 people or a hundred people. It's kind of like, it's like a fisherman's tale, right? It goes from five to a thousand. But, ⁓ and I think that's, and I think that's part of it is what we're always trying to do in the core of what kind of procedure flow came. Gina Gibson: Yeah. Dan Keddy: from is the original mission, which is still critical to us today, was how do we empower the agent? Right? Inherently, if we empower the agent with the right information to be able to give the right answer, then they have a great internal customer experience that they then share with the market. And then that person who called in has a great customer experience. the circle kind of goes on about how well that customer feels about the experience that they just had, because as you know, the benefit of living in North America is you have choice. So if you don't have a great experience somewhere, you can go somewhere else. And I think that's for everyone. We're always trying to kind of make sure that everyone has a great customer experience. So that's a big one for us. ⁓ And there's several others. If you do pop onto our website, we have several use cases that you can kind of see some wins and it's in all of our major ICPs. anything from banking to insurance to even municipal government has been a big win for us as of late because what we're finding, and I'm not sure Gina how much time you spent with municipalities or if they're in your customer, know, Bailiwick, but. they essentially are having this challenge with tribal knowledge because all these people are retiring. COVID started this great retirement journey, all right, for a lot of folks, you know, and they've retired and who used to do that? Well, that was Jim. Well, Jim left, you know, and now we don't have that information available to us. So we've had a lot of municipalities come out and say, hey, like, we find this really easy to use. It's good for our constituents because they're getting the answers they need, but we're also able to map the processes and the kind of the tribal knowledge before someone goes out on retirement. So that's actually been, last year that was one of our biggest growth areas. Gina Gibson: That's fascinating, actually. ⁓ Is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you would like the audience to know? Dan Keddy: I think the important part of my role, and you mentioned earlier, is the VP of channel. What we found is our partners have really helped us elevate our game in the last, I joined about five years ago. So we've seen a huge uptick with our partner channel over the last five years. We're to the point now where our partners are delivering 25 to 30 % of our revenue year in and year out, and that continues to grow. And I think ⁓ it's because of they see the value of what procedure flow can bring to their customer base. And I think that's always a testament to the work we're doing, but also that they see value. They understand what their customers like you, like last year we ran into you at Experience and we were talking. And I think it's one of those situations where ⁓ you really don't understand the power of partnerships until you start to harness those. Gina Gibson: Mm-hmm. Dan Keddy: And then one of the things that I think we've done well, and I noticed from some of your other podcast, ⁓ guests like we have an integration now with Nice, we have an integration with Genesis, we have an integration with AWS and Salesforce. So, you know, we're making sure we're in the right places at the right time. And then as kind of these up and coming solutions are coming through, we're making sure that we have a really good integration strategy. And we're excited for where the back half of the year goes, because as you know, probably a lot of folks are leaning into MCP. to try to get these new integrations off the ground. And that's something too that we will be leaning into as well. So we're getting it to a point now where the reality is if a customer has a specific platform that they like to use that's important to their tech stack, there will be some way we can either integrate or embed. And I think that's the key because if you can help a customer leverage their existing tech stack, you're already winning. Gina Gibson: Exactly, exactly. Dan, thanks so much. And to wrap things up, I've ⁓ always been a fan of James Lipton. So we do a little rapid fire to end the ⁓ podcast. So what sound or noise do you love? Dan Keddy: Sure. Sound or noise? I love car engine sounds. Especially if you really want to, if you were to play a 69 Camaro SS, I heard that 454 roll, I'd be pretty happy. American muscle, I love it. Gina Gibson: Awesome. What sound or noise do you hate? Dan Keddy: ⁓ probably a smoke alarm at that irritating, like I'd probably confess to stuff that I didn't do if I, if you played that for any length of time. Gina Gibson: Yeah. That's excellent. And what profession other than your own would you love to do? Dan Keddy: I actually started out in university as ⁓ a student of Marine Biology. it's one of those, yeah, it's one of those weird things where I looked at the landscape and I thought, I'd really like to be a Marine Biologist. And I was like, wait a minute, no one's hiring those. So I better go to business school. So I went to business school, but I've always had that affinity for kind of Marine Biology kind of zoology. I think that would have been. ⁓ Gina Gibson: Yes! ⁓ Dan Keddy: something of interest because you know I feel really blessed. I live in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. We have a lot of nature around us so I get to see a lot of nature you know on a regular basis and I just I think we take that for granted a lot because of our travels or busy schedules but ⁓ I think anything to do with animals would probably been where I would have liked to not a vet because then you would have had to put things down and that's not what I would have liked to do. Gina Gibson: Yeah. Dan, if somebody wants more information about procedure flow, who should they reach out to? Dan Keddy: I hope they'd reach out to you first and then I hope that they'd get redirected to procedureflow.com and ⁓ we have a Drift, I think, account there so someone could definitely patch in there and get someone live right away to answer questions. Gina Gibson: Wonderful. Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I appreciate learning more about Procedure Floor and I look forward to your new release mid-year. Dan Keddy: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for the platform. Appreciate it and thanks for being a partner. We appreciate it.