Outsourcing: PV Kannan, CEO Of 24/7 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So, the work that you do in the Philippines is more cultural support than technical support.

PV Kannan: That is exactly right, and it has to be individualized, because you don’t care about how the world solves it. It is about my problem and how are you, as my partner, are going to fix that. And that answer may or may not be relevant. That is why we don’t use the term “knowledge base.” Knowledge base should be about nailing the problem in the most perfect form that can be used by anyone with the same problem.

SM: Sure, but nonetheless, the technology involved in capturing knowledge or experiences in this manner and enhancing that knowledge is still, from an artificial intelligence point of view, knowledge-based technology. It’s a learning knowledge base.

PVK: Yes, it is machine learning. It is tech mining. Yes, exactly. It is the same group, but probably it doesn’t involve human curating, because a lot of knowledge bases out there still have some kind of an expert making a recommendation of what is the best answer.

SM: And your technology would be completely automated?

PVK: That is right.

SM: So, when you work with a client, how do you resolve these issues like our clients come with their own systems, they have their own knowledge basis, which is probably a Right Now system or something. And then you have your own system. How do these technologies interface with one another? How do your clients view your technology?

PVK: To a certain extent, we would suck in existing data from other systems. For certain clients, we’ll integrate with Right Now or whatever their platforms are, and keep those as the bases holding this data. It all depends on the client, whether they use Right Now in customer support or customer service, or  any of those platforms. Right Now has are a bunch of platforms sitting out there. And again, we are not a standard, off-the-shelf software that you just go buy and start using. We’re not a Jive.  We engage with the clients and try to understand what systems they have. Are they complete? Do they solve the problem? What do we do to coexist? Our cloud solution is more concerned with, How do I predict an issue and then how do I plug the learning of the integration came back into the answer base?

SM: And who owns that learning knowledge?

PVK: It is part of our system, so we own it.

SM: I see. So, basically, the client owns his own knowledge base and his own . . . you still have to [bring in] the CRM system. I guess the customer brought the contact center system in. For that database they own the data, right?

PVK: They own their data; whatever data clients have is their data.

SM: Just this one bit of data that is enhancing knowledge and is able to resolve queries on the basis of your enhanced technology, that is the data that you want?

PVK: That is correct. It is not really data. It is more of, it is kind of the Google algorithm, not data that they are essentially from any of the sites, what usage pattern, how what leads to the right search being on top of the pile.

SM: Yes, very interesting.

PVK: I wouldn’t call it data as much as the efficiency and the algorithms that go into the work.

SM: That’s very interesting. This is how you are enhancing the profitability of your operation.  At least for some portions of the calls, you are able to get much more profitable transactions than if you had to have a human agent involved in the call.

PVK: That is why we are the only contact center company in Silicon Valley, I guess. Just breathing this air makes you do stuff like this.

SM: But you are not in Silicon Valley; you are in the Philippines, Bangalore, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

PVK: And so are Google and Facebook.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Outsourcing: PV Kannan, CEO Of 24/7
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