DOMOPALOOZA: How to Make Lemonade from REALLY Ugly Lemons

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform everything from…...

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Domo was handed a rough hand. First, make the decision to cancel the live Domopalooza scheduled for the week of March 16. Second, figure out how to turn a massive live experience into a virtual event. Third, just before go-time, deal with a 5.7 magnitude earthquake rattling everyone’s nerves at 7 am followed by aftershocks throughout the day.

This wasn’t just an exercise in handing Domo some lemons and asking for a cool, sweet beverage, it was handing them rotting lemons and asking for a miracle.

The message repeated throughout the event was more of a rallying cry: Go big. Go fast. Go bold. Domo went big. They HAD to go fast. Domopalooza ended up being a bold move to showcase some even more bold and successful clients.

Rethinking Live

Domo did an exceptional job at bringing a completely different experience to their virtual event. Then again this should NOT be a surprise for an event where Josh James is CEO. I don’t think it is a coincidence that John Mellor was also there to help mold James' vision into a successful strategy.

These two KNOW how to do this and do it WELL. 11 years ago…almost to the day…I was in Salt Lake City listening to Maroon 5 thanks to these two. James and Mellor created something unique with the Omniture Summits…so I wasn’t really surprised this reimagined event went so well.

More than anything, Domo leaned in to the fact this was NOT what they originally had in mind, but they wanted to achieve a couple things: share their customer’s stories, wins and thinking, introduce some new products, features and functions, answer as many live questions as possible, allow as much interaction as possible...and remind us that James is one heck of a skier.

Mission accomplished on all fronts.

It is worth noting that Domo DID in fact go big, fast AND bold. It was 2 weeks between shift decision to start time and yet none of the experience felt rushed or that corners had been cut. It was as if this was the plan from the very beginning.

It should also be noted that it may be unfair to compare other events to Domo’s high benchmark of success as moments after the live (albeit virtual) experience multiple states issued bans of gatherings more than 10 – 50 people making assembling a larger scale production team an impossibility. Even with the deck stacked against them, today it might feel as if they still had multiple advantages in pulling this off.

I would argue, however, that the greatest single key to success was that Domo’s focus was NOT on how to deliver their news or their story but instead how to deliver their customer’s successes and their customer’s stories. THAT is where the production and the engagement really made a difference. Josh James wasn’t just talking about data with Brian Kaner, CEO of Pep Boys…the audience was eavesdropping on an earnest conversation and it was captivating.

The Announcements

Throughout the live event and sprinkled across several on-demand sessions, new features and functions were announced. Here are a couple of items that caught my eye:

• Integration studio reminds me of the moment in Dirty Dancing when Johnny announces that NOBODY puts baby in a corner. With Integration Studio, Domo makes sure that no system and no dataset is left in a corner allowing for seamless integration BETWEEN systems and not just from systems. The drag and drop nature of the connectors allows you to quickly and easily bring in data sets, apply ML or AL and configure connections across cloud, on-prem or proprietary solutions.
• Updates to Domo’s Analyzer remembered users are human. From instant undo and redo, drag and drop layout functions and a general sense that the user is in control and capable to “just see what would happen if…”
• Excited to see the updates and upgrades to Data Lineage and Impact Analysts. Lineage allowing users to click into a DataSet to see ancestry of the data to quantify freshness, data source and owner, and any availability of the data and run times. Impact Analysis lets users see what the ramifications of shifts or changes to a DataSet might be. As marketers are being asked to justify data utilization and leap with every new regulation, this functionality is now critical.
• Domo Stories has been a clear hit among users and something Domo deserves to celebrate. The new additions add flexibility and the opportunity to deliver even more context and relatability to the data being visualized. Layered on top of Domo Everywhere, you can take something that feels big and hulking and turn it into something easily accessible, understandable and relatable to everyone across the business. Case in point: Domo took multiple sources of COVID-19 data and created one of the more usable and explorable dashboards I have seen. Check it out here: https://www.domo.com/coronavirus-tracking
• Pardon me while I just let my data nerd flag fly when I say…O-M-G NEW CHART TYPES. For the “pie charts are my jam and I don’t need more than an exploding pie chart” set, you may as well move along…there is nothing here that will interest you. But if you love to see a good visualization come to life…Domo has the data-candy to feed your hungry soul. From the Sankey diagrams to the SPC Charts that can plot trends while highlighting outliers and anomalies but can also trigger alerts to spur immediate attention and action, I’m not going to lie…I got a little breathless during this part.

In the end, there was a playfulness to Domopalooza that was not a by-product of the shift from live to virtual event. It is an attitude that is clearly present across the product as much as it is watching Josh James wearing a panda t-shirt while standing in front of the Salt Palace. Domo wants you to have fun with data…explore with it…play with it…but most importantly, they want you to lose the fear of it, dig in and make decisions about business with it.

In a day and age when there is more than enough conversation and dialogue around the questionable impact and negative ramification around data, it was refreshing to be part of a discussion where data was more about painting like nobody is watching and being OK with the mess than it was about rigidly painting by the numbers and being told to be happy with insights that you only see in a rear view mirror.

Go big. Go fast. Go bold. Well played.

Note: Screenshots were taken from Doomapalooza 2020...if you want to check out the on-demand, visit https://www.domo.com/domopalooza/dp20

Social Networks: Another Dark Web

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

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What’s going on when people spill their guts on social media sites?  Or on the other hand, when they loudly reject the public health advice of their own governments?  

It’s risky to generalise but I tend to agree that there are stereotypical differences across the world in how the public rations out their precious trust to governments versus businesses.

The cliché goes that Americans typically distrust government but have faith in the invisible hand of the markets, and so they “trust” businesses more (the shudder quotes are deliberate when we’re using such broad generalizations). Conversely continental Europeans tend to “trust” governments more than business. Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom fall somewhere between the poles.

Now, trust is a moveable feast, but this article isn’t the place to dissect how trust in social institutions is degrading. Rather I'd like to debunk "trust" in social media. Little or no conscious trust actually enters into the decision to share data with social media.  In fact, it’s not so much a decision as a reflex. 

Very few users comprehend what’s going on in social networking.  We should suspect a priori that the relationship between the giant digital properties and members is not exactly balanced.  Many of the brightest data scientists in the world are employed by Facebook, Google and Twitter, and for the most part they’re not there to find a cure to cancer but to figure out cleverer ways to target advertising.

Facebook is notoriously clever at tricking users into divulging personal data. It’s pretty widely accepted now (isn't it?) that Facebook takes deliberate steps to get users addicted. See Shoshana Zuboff’s epic The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. My own favorite example of Facebook’s trickery is how they gamified the training of their face recognition algorithms, by getting users first to tag each other, and later to confirm the algorithm’s tag suggestions.  Until then, facial recognition routines were calibrated laboriously using relatively small image galleries. But Facebook changed the game, and not only by capitalizing on the billions of pictures innocently entrusted to it by its members, but by crowd-sourcing the matching of names to faces.  It was genius.

So that’s one of the best examples of Facebook’s direct (albeit covert) collection of personal data. But they’re also supremely adept at mining and refining data from the matrix they have cultivated. The closely guarded People You May Know (PYMK) algorithm is the state of the art in indirect data collection. Some of the best digital experts in the world ? like investigative journalist Kashmir Hill ? have been stumped by how Facebook manages to make its connections and generate friend suggestions

What’s to be done about all this? I am not a lawyer but I have two regulatory suggestions.  I’d welcome feedback from legal and regulatory experts. 

First, most places in the world (and increasingly also some U.S. states) have technology neutral data privacy laws which put limits on the collection of personal data. These laws are largely blind to the manner of collection.  If Social Media companies extract insights about identifiable users, then that’s personal data and it’s being collected. Therefore privacy laws apply, especially when individuals are unaware of the collection.  

So in my view, legal action could be taken by Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) in any number of jurisdictions against the unbridled use of algorithms in social networks (including Friend Suggestions, Tag Suggestions and People You May Know) to surreptitiously collect personal data.  Anna Johnston and I have written at length about Facebook’s particular clash with the Collection Limitation principle; see our chapter in the Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. 

Social media’s algorithmic collection of personal data is but one example.  An increasingly prevalent feature of digital businesses is the use of machine learning and analytics to extract insights, such as financial scores and insurance risks, from our digital exhaust.  The synthesis of personal data ? or what the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner calls Collection by Creation ? falls within the scope of most data privacy law. If a business uses algorithms instead of questionnaires in order to get to know you, then privacy principles still apply.

My second regulatory suggestion is good old fashioned consumer law.  Social media magnates like to claim that today’s users are sophisticated enough to “know” that there’s no free lunch on the Internet.  Users are supposed to “know” that their data is being traded with businesses as part of a deal for services. But what if typical users don’t actually know how their data is used?  Very few people have figured this out, considering the opacity of PYMK.

Moreover, what if the social media bosses know that users don't know?  Being aware of ? nay, exploiting ? the information asymmetry while claiming that users are aware of what they're getting into would be deceptive conduct wouldn’t it? The purported services-for-data deal is a one-sided sham if users don't enter into it freely and knowingly.

Some of the richest people in history have arguably made their fortunes on the back of users’ ignorance about how data flows in the Digital Economy. The most lucrative undercover digital economy isn’t the Dark Web, it’s social media, with its tricky personal data practices and synthetic collection algorithms hiding in plain sight.

We Got This: CMOs Stake Their Authentic Claim

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform everything from…...

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For the Chief Marketing Officer, the brand response to COVID-19 has been a case study in authenticity, focused on remaining true to the personality, spirit, character of their brand while keeping an eye on the real-world needs, fears, questions and concerns of their customers. Brands that have maintained open, bidirectional lines of communication and connection with customers are being repaid in loyalty and the promise of future profits, albeit delayed by the realities of a pandemic.

We have seen the best of us rise to the occasion: Chiobani deploying food and resources to address food insecurity in a time of total insecurity, LVMH shifting from luxury parfum purveyors to churning out much needed hand sanitizer, and B2B brands like Zoho, Microsoft and SAP opening up resources to help aggregate data, empower the newly remote workforce and ensure that the voice of the customer (both internal and external) is still flowing into the heart of every organization.

Sadly, we have also seen the worst: price gauging on cleansers, opportunistic advertising pushing fear, conspiracy and false hope cures, phishing scams preying on fear and hope, lazy automation inviting savings for in-store visits.

Despite all the ups and downs, CMOs remain focused on mastering the 3R’s of modern marketing, namely driving revenue, relationships and reputation. While the old Ps (product, place, promotion and price) will always remain near and dear to our Marketing101 hearts, CMOs have graduated – moved on from the fundamentals and into an age of unapologetically driving the business forward. This has never been truer than the leaders facing down the chaos and uncertainty of a global pandemic to lay the groundwork for the explosive growth that will kickstart recovery.

A few key trends will be the hallmark of how successful CMOs pave this profitable path…they also happen to be the trends that got us to a point of Authentic Marketing to begin with.

Expect CMOs to…

Refocus on Humanizing Relationships

In our quest for optimized automation, human relationship building became the lost art of marketing. CMOs will go back to conversations and connections that speak to an audience of one. These efforts will demand a deep understanding and knowledge of the customer and a willingness to realize that segment and persona are not the same. The engagement cycle will shift from hear/react to listen/recall/act/remember, empowered by the power of AI to tackle the data crunching while marketers take care of the hyper-creativity that can create moments of delight.

In the near term, expect to see a renewed focus on data cleanliness, relevance and purpose. Dirty and dark data get dragged into the light while permissions and consent, take on new importance in a post-GDPR/CCPA privacy world. Long term, CMOs will refine marketing’s what (content), where (channel) and why (human relationships) in a more intentional manner.

Get More Involved in the Security Discussion

The trust dynamic is especially critical in the exchange of customer data for value. Modern, connected customers are now hyperaware that their data is the cost of engagement, setting the expectation for personalization, relevance and security. Customers turn over their data with the absolute expectation that the company they entrust will secure that data and honor their privacy. Break that promise and the relationship is not just shaken, it is broken, perhaps forever.

CMOs will start asking more questions about traditionally IT-centered security questions. IT won’t like it one bit. IT will in turn expect that the new systems being onboarded through the marketing stack are vetted for security standards. This is going to strain and test the CMO-CIO bond as marketing questions security posture and readiness and IT questions marketing’s sanity and strategy. The first such test will likely come in the form of marketing’s desire to put more control over data directly into the hands of the consumer. This will be part need (meeting regulatory hurdles for privacy and data transparency) and part value-add (leveraging customer identity and access as a value and promise with each individual customer).

Up-Skill Their Own Leadership Capabilities to Drive Change

To drive the growth agenda, CMOs can’t limit their leadership to the functional boundaries of marketing. In fact, the CMO of 2030 must be a cultural change agent to get the organization’s voice to reflect the customer’s voice regardless of function or department. The CMO will lead by example, intentionally inspire, reward and recognize. While the CEO will establish the vision, the CMO will establish the purpose and path. This will require a keen understanding of back- and front-office dynamics, systems and responsibilities, especially what part each function plays in the delivery of customer experiences.

Expect to see more partnership with purpose between CMOs and their counterparts in HR, compliance and risk to create a measured cadence for change. This will ruffle feathers for organizations not focused on the customer as leaders in these roles will question why the CMO is stepping into their lane. Interestingly, CMOs are often thought to already have the “soft skills” of management—continuous learning, advanced communication, negotiation and empathy, to name a few. Those will remain critical heading into the new decade, but CMOs are adding to their bag of tricks to include business analytics, cognitive agility, rapid decision-making and a firm grasp on finance.

Start Training AI to Grow Up Into a Super-Talented Intern

Organizations not leveraging AI will admit their folly and will start to leverage machine learning and cognitive tools to improve operational efficiencies and optimize rapid-fire decision-making. But there will also be a realization that AI is still an intern that needs guidance, coaching and leadership. As discussions around ethics, bias and the unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence continue, marketing will refocus talent and teams to apply AI in more intentional and meaningful ways.

The marketing function will never be a fully autonomous car—it will always require a driver fully in control of the wheel. AI in marketing becomes the smartest GPS ever developed, extrapolating an unheard-of influx of data to deliver new shortcuts, alerts for opportunity and reminders for engagement. For the CMO, AI will empower teams, not replace, talent. Expect to see CMOs question the “AI-ization of everything,” selectively applying AI-powered tools where optimization and efficiencies around data are most needed and trying to avoid the familiar traps of half-baked cool-tech implementations on top of old, ineffective processes.

All in all, the greatest trend that will make authentic marketing a priority and not just an aspiration is the newly affirmed confidence of the CMO who now sees a path to the office of CEO. Growth through engagement has paved this new road. It will have bumps, but it has been successfully navigated. Regardless of new monikers or brands, the role of the chief marketing officer will endure, sitting squarely at the intersection of business, brand and buyer.

News Analysis: Tech Vendors Takes On #Coronavirus

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Over the past two-weeks, the tech community has sought different ways to assist with the battle against Covid-19. Efforts range from free usage of product, cash assistance, donations, and product innovations. Here's a short run down of some highlighted announcements:

IBM, The White House, and Department Of Energy create a COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium

Photo credit: IBM

A unique public-private consortium led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and IBM was created to enable researchers access to supercomputing resources. The COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium pulls 16 systems, including the world's fastest supercomputer - IBM Summit, to deliver 330 petaflops of supercomputing power to process epidemiology, bioinformatics, molecular modeling, and healthcare system response. Researchers can apply on this website and must describe what type of support from staff at the national labs or other facilities will be essential, helpful, or unnecessary for their project along with data privacy restrictions.

ServiceNow releases four emergency response apps for COVID-19 response.

ServiceNow provides free access to four emergency response apps designed to help companies, employees, and government agencies respond to the coronavirus crisis. The four apps include emergency response operations, emergency outreach, emergency self-report, and emergency exposure management. One of these apps was donated by The State of Washington’s Department of Health. They built the Emergency Response Operations application on the Now Platform in just three weeks.

Facebook donating N95 masks, offering $100M for small business, and media grants.

Facebook contributed its emergency stockpile of 720,000 N95 masks to US healthcare institutions. The social media giant also set aside $100 million for small business owners in cash grants and ad credits. In partnership with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association (LMA), Facebook will offer $1 million in grants to US and Canadian local news organizations covering the coronavirus crisis. The fund provides grants of up to $5,000 to local news rooms to cover unexpected costs related to coronavirus reporting. Organizations can apply for the grants at this link.

Zoom gives away software to K-12 schools

Photo credit: Zoom

CEO Eric Yuan has stepped up to help address the crisis facing the shutdown of 40M schools in the US. As one of the emerging tools for online classrooms, Zoom has become a de facto standard. Yuan has removed the limits for any K-12 schools affected in the United States, Japan, and Italy. On March 18th, an estimated 350,000 people downloaded the Zoom app. Using a school email address, students, teachers, and administrators can fill out a form to register for the program.

Photo credit: Apple

Apple has updated the venerable Siri to answer questions and help screen folks on those who may have COVID-19. Users can ask Siri questions such as "Do I have the coronavirus?" or "How do I know if I have the coronavirus?" or "Am I sick with the coronavirus?" Using answers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Public Health Service, the voice assistant will ask you for related symptoms from dry cough, shortness of breath, fever, and other related symptoms as they are updated. The app also includes links to telemedicine apps and services. At this moment, the service is geared towards the U.S.

 

The Bottom Line. BigTech can help and this time its better not be a marketing ploy

Most big tech companies are in a sound financial position with massive free cash flow and cash on hand. These companies have the resources in talent, technology, and know how to assist. As more companies step up to help in the coronavirus battle, expect these efforts to come from authenticity not a public relations opportunity. Anything less would be detrimental to the technology vendor's brand and their standing in the public.

Monday's Musings: Inside The Five Levels Of Autonomous Enterprises

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Cognitive Apps Power The Future Of Autonomous Enterprises

Cognitive applications run mission-critical business systems in a continuous, self-driving, self-learning, auto-compliant, self-securing, and self-healing approach. These AI driven systems intelligently automate transactional systems and processes such as campaign to lead, order to cash, procure to pay, incident to resolution, concept to market, and hire to retire. The goal of an autonomous enterprise is to continuously automate precision decisions at scale. Why? Transactional applications have run their course. Pressure to reduce margins, technical debt, and investment in core systems create tremendous pressure for automation. Customers seek cognitive based approaches in order to build the foundation for AI driven precision decisions. The benefits include less staffing, reduced errors, smarter decisions, and security at scale. The quest for an autonomous enterprise starts with a desire to consider what decisions require intelligent automation vs human judgment.

Inside The Five Levels Of Autonomous Enterprises

Constellation identifies five levels of autonomous enterprises and predicts when these cognitive apps will deliver full autonomy in this $10.35B market by 2030 (see figure 1):

Figure 1. Understand Five Levels Of Autonomous Enterprises

 

Level 1 Autonomous Enterprise: Basic Automation

In this level, the system can provide basic task and workflow automation.

When? Today.

Includes: Basic process automation tools such as BPM, manual instrumentation and control, and intelligent workflow automation

Who’s in control? Humans are still in control and guide many manual steps.

Level 2 Autonomous Enterprise: Human Directed

Level 2 enables human directed automation of business processes.

When? Current state of the art

Includes: Robotic process automation, process mining tools, journey orchestration tools, machine learning algorithms, natural language processing

Who’s in control? Humans direct major decisions, minor decisions automated over time with some effort in training

Level 3 Autonomous Enterprise: Machine Intervention

Level 3 delivers automation with occasional machine intervention

When? The next big thing in 2020

Includes: Cognitive applications, neural networks, GANS models, contextual decisions, and next best actions.

Who’s driving? Humans still on standby, but can be hands-off for periods of time

Level 4 Autonomous Enterprise: Fully Autonomous

Level 4 presumes that the machines can deliver full automation but not sentience

When? Sometime in 2023

Includes: AI Driven smart services, full automation, self-learning, self-healing, and self-securing.

Who’s driving? Machines fully automated

Level 5 Autonomous Enterprise: Humans Optional

Level 5 achieves full sentience and humans may no longer be needed.

When? 2030

Includes: Fully autonomous sentience, empowering precision decisions at scale

Who’s driving? Humans fully optional

The Bottom Line: Expect Level 4 Autonomous Enterprises To Emerge In 2023

The pioneering work with early cognitive applications show exponential progress in achieving Level 4 status by 2023. Organizations will have to rethink how they work with their transactional applications, future data-driven digital networks, and distributed compute and storage environments. The future is autonomous. Machines will deliver services that are continuous, auto-compliant, self-healing, self-learning, and self-aware. The need for greater precision decisions will require connections to data-driven digital networks and for more and more sources of data. This battle for public, private, and shared data will shape who wins in new networked economies that form the future of this autonomous decade (see video).

https://blog.softwareinsider.org/2019/12/23/mondays-musings-the-roaring-20s-and-the-futureof2020/

Lessons from a WFH Freshman

Liz Miller

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

About Liz Miller: Liz Miller is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation, focused on the org-wide team sport known as customer experience. While covering CX as an enterprise strategy, Miller spends time zeroing in on the functional demands of Marketing and Service and the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer, the evolution of customer engagement, and the rising requirement for a new security posture that accounts for the threat to brand trust in this age of AI. With over 30 years of marketing experience, Miller offers strategic guidance on the leadership, business transformation, and technology requirements to deliver on today’s CX strategies. She has worked with global marketing organizations to transform everything from…...

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Welcome to the incoming class at Working From Home! We hope you have enjoyed the first couple of days of orientation.

By the end of the week, this sh!t is gonna get really REAL. So, I thought I’d pass along some of the lessons I learned in my first five months swimming in the deep end.

How Did I Get Here? I entered the WFH class in November 2019 when I joined Constellation Research after 27 years in an office. In the blink of an eye, I went from being in the middle of a culture that expected physical presence in order to be productive into one that allowed for isolation in order to be productive.

If I am being honest, it wasn’t the working part that proved to be the big adjustment…it was the AT home part. Work has muscle memory, especially for a road warrior who is used to adapting workstyle based on what hotel, conference room, airport lounge or connected aircraft you happen to be on. When I got started, I worked as if I was on the road versus not working in an office. But remote work isn’t road work…that was a hard habit to break.

5 Tips Based on My Early Failings. Some of these will sound trite, but for me, they ended up being the difference between getting into a groove versus getting into a funk.

1. Shower. No, seriously. The act of showering is and of itself a pattern or routine that sparks thinking. A behavioral theorist named Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi posited that when one is placed in an environment that promotes deep thought and relaxation, creativity can quite literally incubate. This is central to his deeper concept of “Flow” or the state of concentration and engagement when one completes a task that challenges one’s skills. Flow – and the supreme satisfaction that comes from accomplishment – can’t be forced, but it can be sparked.
   
   A shower can anchor your day. It can spark big ideas. It can make you feel human. Oh…and yes, wearing sweats and PJs all day SOUNDS awesome. But by week 2, it looses its charm. Make a goal of getting fully work-casual dressed at least once a week. It snaps your brain into a different space…and on lockdown day #13…we are ALL gonna need a snap or two.
    
2. Set aside a space. That’s right…you have to pull a Les Nessman. Get some tape (or at least mentally get some tape) and cordon off something that you deem to be your office. There is a discipline that comes with working in an office – a social construct that limits the distraction and wayward wanderings of a mess in sweats looking for a crumb-free laptop perch.
   
   When I first started with the couch-as-office route, comfort was clearly the perk of my new surroundings…complete with a reclining leg option, snacks a few steps away and a big TV with lots of shows begging to be binged (you know…as “white noise in the background.) Next thing I knew, I was asleep, hands still on the keyboard, Netflix asking if I wanted to keep watching. The act of walking to a space that is deemed as your official workspace is liberating, even if that space is the other corner of your couch. It pushes you to set boundaries and personal rules. You will find that if you start to respect the boundaries of your workspace, others might get the drift!
    
3. Set “office hours”, just not from 9 to 5. Those are old numbers trying to fit into a new world. At my old office, we used to position hours as “minimum expectations” as in so we TELL you it is 8:30 to 5:30, but I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t in before 8:30 and I can’t remember leaving before 6.
   
   But at home, you just are NOT gonna make those minimum expectations. Here’s the secret: IT IS OK. You will find the hours that work for everyone – for the business, for your family and most definitely for you. But again, boundaries are essential. It is easy to think, “Oh who’s clocking me in?” while skimming hours off the clock. Without the social construct, accountability is easy to manipulate.
    
4. Don’t binge buy gear. You do NOT need the professional grade camera, speakers and microphone to make your Zoom calls work. Most just don’t need the pro-grade studio set up. Honestly, I get by with the camera on my computer. If you are just getting the team together and wanted to play with the virtual backgrounds so it looks like you are in space, you DO NOT need the gear upgrade.
   
   For me, I needed a keyboard. There is something really “official” about a keyboard. It is the difference between working and working on the road. You may also want to invest in a headset with a microphone so you can stop sounding like you are IN the fishbowl in every conference call. The goal here is to sound and appear professional…not actually BE a home office film maker.
    
5. Congrats! You are now your office’s CISO. Times of crisis always bring out the best and the worst in people. The worst has already started to come out of the woodwork. Attacks are up, scams are up, hijacking everything from the WHO logo to the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus tracker!
   
   Every connection, every email, every file should be seen as a threat. Connect with your actual CISO or CIO to get a FULL understanding of security protocols, requirements and options. You may be required to log into corporate IT assets via a virtual private network (VPN)…you may have mandated security apps and programs already on your computer.
   
   If you have none of those things…go get them. There are lots of great VPN service providers out there that take seconds to set up but secure your connections to ensure that your machine can’t be violated when you finally get to go to that coffee shop with the free (unsecured) WIFI. (Check out ExpressVPN, Surfshark, NordVPN, TunnelBear and for those out there into secure content viewing and, dare I say, torrent streams, you probably already run IPVanish.) Anti-virus and malware protection should be a baseline. Get both. Enable security on your browsers…everyone from Google to Apple have varying degrees of protection and privacy baked in. It takes a village!

You will hit a groove and find a balance between what social media thinks you should do (Enough with the “take the time to tackle those projects you have pushed off like cleaning the attic…this isn’t vacation…it is working people!) and what you can do given your priorities and goals at work.

Several tech firms have opened the gates to let newly minted remote teams have access to the productivity and operational tools that really help remote workers get to work. Check out the offers from folks like Zoho (ZohoRemotely is now being offered for free) and Microsoft (Microsoft Teams is now available with lifted restrictions on user limits).

My colleague Dion also hosted a terrific webcast for folks looking to pick up some real remote working tips from culture change to tech tools from collaboration to productivity platforms. Check it out here: https://www.constellationr.com/media/guide-remote-work-during-covid-19.

Working from home has been my new normal for several months now and I still feel like I’m working out the kinks to get it right. I can only imagine how people feel who got tossed into the deep end this week. Good news is that it IS possible to just start swimming…you CAN just stay afloat until you get your bearings and kick start your flow.

Oh…and most important tip I can pass along: virtual backgrounds are found by opening Zoom, clicking on the gear on the right there…look to the left column menu about halfway down and there it is…you can add you own images. Current mood: padded cell… ‘cuz my new co-worker is a toddler!

Hang in there everyone!

Let the Sunshine in: Zendesk’s Service-Centric Approach to CRM

Zendesk Relate was scheduled to take place in Miami the first week of March. Instead, it was the first Coronavirus casualty on this analyst’s jam-packed March event calendar. Credit to Zendesk management for rapidly deciding to cancel the event and quickly pivoting to a virtual analyst briefing instead. Zendesk Relater, the virtual incarnation of fun, sun, and sessions in Miami, comes later in March.

In the analyst briefing the Zendesk team covered its two major announcements: the expansion of Zendesk’s CRM platform, Sunshine, and availability of two suites, one for sales and one for service.

First, the suites. In practical terms, Support Suite and Sales Suite are both packages that bundle numerous capabilities—such as Chat, Talk, and Messaging—along with the core functionalities of Support and Sell. The advantages for customers include straightforward pricing and out of the box integration across all capabilities in one workspace.

Zendesk has long been known for providing a straightforward, integrated, easy to use interface—or workspace—for service agents. The new Support Suite builds on what was already an intuitive view of relevant customer information to include a wider range of communication channels as standard.

The Sales Suite is arguably more groundbreaking. In keeping with the strategy behind acquiring Base, the underpinnings of Zendesk Sell, the company has introduced an offering designed to do for salespeople what Support has done for customer service agents. The Sell interface has a similar look and feel to Support, but has been designed around the work of selling to customers. Instead of a database, customer conversations—in effect, the workflow of sales—form the core structure of the workspace.

Sales Suite acknowledges that salespeople, too, use a wide variety of communication channels to interact with their customers. As with Support Suite, the idea here is to unify all those channels to provide salespeople as broad a view as possible of the conversation happening with any given customer. Recognizing that salespeople need a simple, straightforward system to help them navigate the work and next best actions of selling is, like it or not, still pretty radical in the CRM space. Zendesk Sales Suite gets a major step closer to closing the gap.

That said, the offering still seems primarily to meet the needs of inside sales teams. While that may fit the bill for some companies, many more also want the ability to track and manage face-to-face interactions with customers. (As odd as that might sound in the midst of nationwide self-quarantines, it will remain a high priority!) That’s something we’re still waiting for.

Most importantly, Sunshine. The Sunshine platform easily embodies the most compelling aspect of Zendesk’s move into CRM. Sunshine provides both the underlying data structure and the basis for defining workflows to support customer interactions, regardless of channel or internal department. The core components of Sunshine include profiles, events, objects (which can be customized), and conversations. The announcement covered general availability of unified customer profiles (the CRM requirement du jour) as well as custom events and an AWS events connector to stream data.

It may seem trivial, but the fact that Zendesk uses very different language to describe the key components makes a huge difference. Instead of leads, Zendesk’s platform focuses on events, which trigger actions. It’s difficult to overstate how important this distinction is to designing systems that respond to customers, rather than trying to force fit them through a particular process. This is undoubtedly part of the customer service heritage that Zendesk brings to the CRM market landscape. It’s a point of view that is both distinct and important.

Unfortunately, we didn’t hear much discussion on this perspective during the analyst briefing. (And yes, Zendesk Sell definitely still uses the term “leads”.) To my mind, that’s a missed opportunity. As companies grapple with questions of how to transform their organizations to be more responsive to customers and focused on shaping customer experience, issues like data structure and system architecture matter. Get these underpinnings right and a whole new realm of possibilities open for redefining the ways companies interact and engage with their customers. That’s a conversation that matters—even to a non-technical audience.

Bottom line: Zendesk brings an incredibly valuable perspective and philosophy on customer experience to the CRM market. The potential is there, but we have yet to see it fully realized. The current development roadmap will help. We’d also like to see Zendesk step up and articulate more about why it’s taking the approach it has and how it’s benefitting customers. This vision has an eager audience ready and waiting to hear it.