2019 Consortium for Service Innovation Member Summit Overview

Two and half days of knowledge sharing, lessons learned and swarming around operational efficiencies and best practices for the service and support industry. Matt Seaman, Executive Director of the Consortium for Service Innovation, opened with "the art of the possible", setting the stage for us to “Diverge” (explore) during the summit, and “Converge” as we leave with ideas for execution.

This year we heard about some fantastic things happening with "Big Knowledge and Digital Transformation". Matt went on to educated us about Emerging Digital Automation in Services. AI is changing our landscape and it is essential for Digital Automation, it will free up our employees from mundane tasks, to focus on new creative ones.

Greg Oxton, Strategic Advisor, for the Consortium for Service Innovation, along with Carla Verwijs, TellTales Consulting Group, announced the release of Intelligent Swarming? v1 Framework and Architect. Many of us have been waiting for this - Intelligent Swarming is a hot topic and rapidly making its way across many organizations and companies.

Intelligent Swarming was followed by Koree Mires, Cisco, who shared how Cisco was using Automation as an Enabler. A way for companies to identify opportunities to eliminate simple tasks; this tied back to what we learned earlier about eliminating mundane tasks.

Then we broke up into tracks. I was able to attend a session presented by Greg Taylor and Heidi Wagstaff of Blizzard Entertainment. Greg and Heidi shared how they use Machine Learning and Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS?) to evolve their products, content, and their passion for “Getting the player back in the game”, a catchphrase that resonated with all 100 of us from varying industries, and a phrase Greg wished he would have trademarked, since it was “reused” many times over the next 2 days.

The next session I attended was Dan Nowitz of PTC, Dan shared how PTC is using Augmented human intelligence and Predictive Customer Engagement, which will result in new experiences for customers and employees! My key takeaway here was that AI compliments humans, it does not replace them, we still need them! (Whew... that's a relief to me).

My last session from the tracks was the one I presented, “Sustaining a KCS program with Knowledge Domain Experts (KDEs) and Coaching”. It’s always exciting to share lessons learned, as well as successes. At Akamai, our KDEs are continuing to evolve and produce great value for the company. I'll share a tip from that presentation - when starting a KDE program don’t boil the ocean, in other words - fitting with my presentation theme -

“Do not attempt the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs”

[I could not attend the Star Wars Celebration happening the end of last week, but I was able to fit in some Star Wars during a Celebration of Knowledge!]

I would have liked to attend all presentations, I missed out on knowledge sharing from Sara Feldman at Mindtouch, and Stephanie Gloden of Fidelity, but heard good things about each. My favorite presentation of the 2 1/2 days was from fellow Consortium Innovators Arnfinn Austefjord, Service Now, and Kristin Hunter, AARP. They talked about the new funnel in the cloud model, aligning a couple of framework models the consortium has been working on, but more importantly, they provided solid information and education about “Communicating the Value of Knowledge”, and what self-service success really means.

Last week was full of value, thanks to all the attendees, who are “contributors”, and participated during open space. As always, I look forward to the next Consortium event!

? 2019 The KCS Academy. KCS?, Intelligent Swarming?, and Adaptive Organization? are service marks of the Consortium for Service Innovation?