How Knowledge-as-a-Service Meets Organizations' KM Challenges and Changing Needs: Q&A with John Chmaj, senior director for KM strategy, Verint
Video produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly
Verint is a leading customer engagement company that helps organizations adapt to the future of work, eliminate inefficiencies created by organizational and data silos, and consistently deliver differentiated experiences at scale.
John Chmaj, Verint’s senior director for KM strategy, recently spoke with KMWorld about the rapidly evolving world of customer engagement and knowledge management.
How is knowledge management changing and what are the challenges and opportunities you see ahead?
John Chmaj: We see it as integrated, seamless, intelligent, and manageable. So many experiences are now driving out to different customers across different channels. You can talk to your machines, you can receive proactive notifications, you can get knowledge from—not just web tools anymore, but pretty much everything, from your digital devices to any place that you shop, anything that you're looking for online. Digital-first is really just a watchword for the final paradigm shift in our culture to digital channels as the first port of inquiry across so many touchpoints. We have finally reached a point where we have enough intelligence and basic capability in our digital tools to be able to rely on them to start a whole host of any types of inquiries or interactions that we need to perform.
How do trends such as AI, machine learning, and automation play in this evolution?
JC: The things that these capabilities do best is to enhance existing tools and experiences to bring better information back faster. But it's still important that any interaction rely on a clear understanding of the focus of what the user's trying to accomplish and the type of customer experience or user experience that is desired. AI, machine learning, and automation are not ends into themselves. They are capabilities that can enhance and optimize existing processes, so it's an exciting time to start thinking about how to leverage these tools to create better experiences, but still to focus on the ways in which we want our customers to engage.
What are the new and interesting capabilities that are emerging now for knowledge users?
JC: In the 1990s, Bill Gates coined the phrase, “Information at your fingertips.” I feel that vision is finally being fulfilled across the board with how we engage knowledge—truly at our fingertips. We can ask for it, we can subscribe to it, and we can get targeted pieces of it—as we chat, as we interact on social and web channels. It's available when, where, and how we need it. The fundamental shift is something we call “Knowledge as a Service”: knowledge is liberated from particular tools or interfaces. It's free to flow to us more naturally and seamlessly wherever we need it.