How Knowledge-as-a-Service Meets Organizations' KM Challenges and Changing Needs: Q&A with John Chmaj, senior director for KM strategy, Verint

So, what are technology vendors doing to address new digital customer scenarios?

JC: Well, everybody seems to have an AI or automated something, right? The whole industry is adding these capabilities and touting them. At Verint, our focus is on developing a holistic digital-first creation and delivery platform so that organizations can truly pass knowledge across touchpoints and customer interactions. We're also leveraging our back-end workforce, engagement, and CX tools to help organizations measure and optimize these interactions in scalable ways.

The whole digital-first endeavor is building toward a “one workforce” capability where employee-led, automated, and intelligent actions work together in mutual support. In this vision, technology and software is providing continuous support and augmentation of people's expertise—front-ending digital interactions where appropriate but also providing the same intelligence automation to help people do their jobs better. So, these new digital customer scenarios are a combination of better front-end experience but also better empowerment of people as they do their jobs.

What should organizations think about in initiating and evolving these capabilities?

JC: Well, the basic challenge remains the same: What customer experiences do you want to deliver? How do you want to serve and enable people? With that focus, the application of AI, machine learning, and automation take their proper relationship as optimizing, accelerating, and integrating customer engagement—not replacing it. Don't get distracted with what the new tools may do—focus on using them in targeted ways to update and optimize how you want to engage. The new scenarios that you can do in these areas will appear naturally and you won't get distracted or otherwise confused by capabilities that you may not necessarily need for a particular customer interaction that you want.

So, what are some of the things to be prepared for and aware of? Are there any potential challenges?

JC: The first-time shot at any new technology is likely to be uneven at best. Agile thinking is required; try something—examine the results quickly and carefully and adjust. For example, AI only works with good data. If your data isn't clean or meaningful, you'll waste a lot of time trying to apply it in artificial intelligence scenarios. Don't lose track of the user's sense of control over automated interactions. Users will do and expect things that machines can't handle well. So look to blend your automated and human-led decisions properly. Finally, take things a step at a time. Both you and your customers are doing something new when you apply new technology. Give yourselves time to get to know it better—together.