Insights on the Future of Customer Experience and Cloud Transformation with Genesys

Highlights from a conversation with Juergen Tolksdorf, Senior Director of Marketplace Innovation at Genesys, and Fred Stemmelin, Executive Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at SightCall about the importance of strong partner ecosystems, the move from on-premises to cloud solutions, and how AI is shaping the future of customer experience (CX).

Juergen, can you tell us more about your role at Genesys?

Juergen: Yeah, for sure. So I'm taking care of the App Foundry Marketplace. That means the enterprise experience for our partners in the marketplace. So I make sure it's a continuously well-oiled machine for our resellers, our ISV partners, our account managers, but also for our customers. And I'm taking care of the entire backend of that since the initial launch date of AppFoundry.

Fred, can you tell us more about SightCall in the App Foundry?

Fred: Sure. I'm EVP of partnerships. For SightCall, I manage all partnerships and Genesys is one of our strategic partners. We are an elite App Foundry partner and we are bringing visual assistance to Genesys customer interactions. And we are one of the top partners, as Juergen says, so happy to be there. We are trying to drive more business together and we have still a lot to accomplish together.

Can you talk more about the value of a strong partner ecosystem.

Juergen: For sure. So a strong partner ecosystem is not just the partnership, you know, a logo exchange and signing some letters. That's the easy part. That's what everybody can do.

For us it's really important that with the marketplace experience and with these partnerships, we are able to gain customer trust and loyalty. We want to provide choice and options to our customers. And with the marketplace experience, we want to provide a solution for every issue, which makes it on the one hand partially a little bit messy because you have lots of solutions in the marketplace.

On the other hand, it makes it simple for customers to consume applications straight out of the marketplace. With that overview of multiple applications, we provide more collaboration, not just between customers and vendors, but also between vendors, between ISV partners, between ISV partners and resellers, and between resellers, ISV partners, customers, and our sellers.

We see AppFoundry and the marketplace basically as a matchmaker platform. Think about Uber who brings taxi drivers and customers together. We do the exact same with ISV partners and customers. But we add one more portion to the whole thing... actually two.

One is our resellers... and one is our own sellers, so our own account executives can actually help our customers to consume applications out of the marketplace.

Fred: So if I may add to what Juergen said, the marketplace is a great place for customers to find solutions to enhance the Genesys solution.

But it's also a great place for them to buy and consume solutions. It's an easy way for them to buy solutions from partners. Right, Juergen?

Juergen: Exactly.

Can you help us understand more about that turning point for service organizations that make the big change from on-prem to cloud?

Juergen: The turning point... Well, when you look at it from a 20,000-foot level, I think ultimately it's the reduction of costs. But I think it's also the implementation of higher standards, providing higher stability, providing better service levels.

It's also a reduction of carbon footprint, because when you put more things to the cloud, your physical footprint is going to be smaller. At the same time, the more industries are going into the cloud, the more they collaborate within the cloud and the less carbon footprint we actually use as human beings, which is amazing in itself.

And of course, it's also the reduction of head counts. It's the reduction of redundancies. As I said, it's better stability because you get better standards out of the cloud. You get all the advantages of a marketplace because you can simply plug things together within the cloud.

And you can, as a contact center in particular, switch faster to new endeavors, to new events. You can react faster on special occasions. You can faster implement shifts and strategies.

These are multiple turning points for customers and for different industries to switch from on-premise to the cloud. It's way more safe. It's way more reliable. And ultimately, it's way faster to adopt new technologies.

Visit SightCall on the Genesys AppFoundry Marketplace

Fred: When it comes to CX and digital transformation, do you see the move from on-premise to the cloud being equal in the US and in Europe?

Juergen: I think, you know, with GDPR, the European folks are a little bit slower with their cloud adoption compared to North America. There is a ton of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

I love to make the example of a friend of mine. He's creating reports for the pharmacy industry and needs to make sure that the medicine is actually validated and FDA approved.

When he sees that the entire cycle is being managed through a cloud-based infrastructure, he can tick all the boxes in his checkpoint list when it comes to reliability, redundancy, all these things in the cloud because all of that is already being taken care of.

And the same applies to Genesys, right? As we are based on AWS, our customers don't need to worry about all these things such as redundancy, stability, making sure that the air conditioning is turned on and not accidentally switched off.

In on-premise solutions, all of these things are just available in the cloud and that makes things way easier. However, as you said, Fred, that's exactly right. In the EU or in Europe, we do see a little bit more resistance, but that resistance is going down because ultimately, there is no other opportunity than going to the cloud.

Of course, you still have lots of people who are saying, "No, I would stay on-premise forever." But I think because of the buzzword—and I'm still not saying it—it becomes more or less impossible looking into the future to adjust to all these upcoming challenges.

Speaking of the buzzword... You can't have a CX discussion these days without mentioning AI. So how are customers leveraging Genesys AI to design better solutions and consistently improve their customer experience?

Juergen: So let me kick off with Genesys and what we do with AI. I mean, we have tons of options. We have chatbots, we have voice bots, we have agent co-pilots. We have predictive routing. We have a perfect blend of digital and voice with knowledge management, all AI-enabled.

AI doesn't stop there. It's also built on conversational intelligence, forecasting and planning, quality assurance, performance management, work automation, and task routing.

I don't want to tick all the boxes we provide, but in fact, we do it. And all of that is AI. It's incredible even for myself, you know, I've been with Genesys for a pretty long time now, almost 20 years. But when you see this buzzword AI coming up, you think like, "Yeah, that's the future." It's not. It's there, it's built-in, and we provide it in a turnkey solution.

And we just don't provide AI as a turnkey solution, we expand it through the App Foundry, letting partners in who embrace AI and who actually add more capabilities to our solutions, such as SightCall.

Fred: When we are collecting information during a visual assistance call or video call, we can bring all this information to Genesys so we can apply AI on top of the information we collected.

So that's, I think, the most important thing when we are talking about the integration. It's not only the power of our AI or AR engine on SightCall but it's the fact that we are bringing information to the Genesys cloud and they can run AI also on top of this.

Fred: As the director of the App Foundry, the marketplace of Genesys, you've already accomplished a lot in terms of program, infrastructure, and the number of partners. What's next for what you envision for App Foundry in the coming years?

Juergen: So we don't want to become the next Google, right? Where we just pull everything into the marketplace and customers can search but also have the burden on their shoulders to find the right solution.

I think we will see, not just in AppFoundry, but in marketplaces in general, better curation. We will see better recommendations. We will see better tailoring to customers' needs. Because, it might sound bold, but Genesys powers thousands of customers worldwide today. We know exactly what challenges these CX providers are facing.

We know by heart what a good customer experience center is. And this is in our bones on a daily basis. So that's why we will be better at providing a marketplace experience that is tailored to customer needs so that customers can actually see, "Hey, I'm right now in my customer experience journey. I'm right now here. I could do these things. I could apply video for particular cases like Nespresso did."

And I'm not tired of mentioning that business case because it's genius, in fact. I love it, seriously.

When you have a piece of hardware and you want to provide customer service to it, why not enable video in case something doesn't work the way it's designed... to allow the customer to get a quicker resolution? That's exactly what we are looking for when we're looking to the future of the marketplace experience.

Fred: SightCall has been a Genesys partner for three years, right? And we are already super proud to be an App Foundry partner, an elite App Foundry partner among the top 20 of your partners. We have many joint marquee customers together.

Why do you think we are seeing such success with Genesys? And I think that I'm asking that question because it can be beneficial for current and future App Foundry partners, right?

Juergen: I think you did something extremely well. And I take this as an example everywhere I'm asked about it. You tailor your solution to particular customer needs.

I was talking to Thomas Cottereau, I don't know, about 10 years ago when he had his ideas around SightCall. He was already successful with it with lots of customers already. You have a clear vision and you execute among that vision.

Your tailored business case speaks to customer demand, not just, "Hey, here's a piece of technology... you can hit this button, that button, that button, and you get different variations of whatever we provide."

You are saying, "This is what we do, this is what you can achieve with this, and this is why we make your customers happy."

And that is a true differentiator. That's what everybody understands within three minutes. And I think that's what gives you success.