More Than Just Testing, Mobile Beyond QA

Video Transcript

yes hello Paul hello Jennifer thank you guys for joining us um so I am very excited about this session in particular um because Katan when you think of us you may think of testing and things like that but Paul and his team at Blue beam use us for a very um unique and not necessarily normal use case um in our world which we think is great so I don’t want to spoil anything I will pass it off to to Jen and uh you guys have fun awesome thanks Adam Hi everyone um my name is Jennifer Palma I am a customer success manager here at Katon uh really excited to be a part of this I will definitely be keeping an eye out on the chat for any questions um or any messages that come through as me and Paul go through this um but without further Ado I do want to take some time to um have Paul introduce himself um and and speak a little bit about him before we get started on on what I’ll be covering today our segment is going to be covering customer support and the importance of customer experience and how support really plays a part in the customer Journey when it comes to customer satisfaction on things um so Paul um we would love to hear a little bit about you your background um where you’re located um yes okay all right hi I’m Paul Gibbons Wagner I am the senior operations manager for the technical support group at uh blue beam Inc um what that means is I’m responsible for all of my division’s um data analytics and Reporting as well as our systems and processes um more or less I oversee how we take care of our customers and I make sure that we’re providing all the stakeholders in the company the right data to understand what the needs of our customers are um from our lens and I’ve been at Blue beam almost 14 years years um always in the support um Division and uh yeah and I’m in the Pasadena California area uh that’s where blue beam’s home office is and I’ve been yeah I that’s kind of where I’m at and what I do for the company um I kind of look at the uh where we are as far as a support organization and where that fits in kind of the technical service industry and um gauge that against you know are like how can we take the next step forward in providing better support for our customers and just kind of taking care of all of that um so that’s that’s who I am that’s what I do you know that’s kind of what brings me here today awesome Paul so I have a question for you um what what does Blue Bean do can you talk to a little us about what your company does just so I understand um we uh provide uh aec architecture engineering and construction industry um collaboration and project uh Management Solutions um started out really as a drawing plan sharing platform and communicating drawing plans between offices and providing tools to enable that um and we’ve kind of become the indust standard in that where we’re a global company we have customers around the world who are building everything and we just help them do what they do um and it’s a it’s a changing industry they’re very kind of the industry was kind of slow to adopt digital Solutions so we’ve kind of been the right solution at the right time to kind of drive that Evolution and uh yeah so it’s it’s very much um construction um management that’s awesome so let me just further dissect this just to make sure I understand Paul so if I’m am a construction company and let’s say I have blueprints to what I’m working on and I have more than just the person in charge that needs to see those blueprints I’m assuming those are available in an app for the other um construction team members um and those team members view the the blueprints can make changes make requests and that is essentially where blue bam assists them yes is the navigation of that app between these work sites is that correct that that’s correct yeah you’d be amazed at the number of people who need to be in the loop in the conversation at any particular stage of a construction project and so yeah it’s all about sharing plans it’s all about notating plans it’s all about requests for information about the plans and what uh what’s needed um yeah it’s all about helping everyone stay connected to meet deadlines stay under budget you know the important stuff awesome well it sounds very interesting um my dad is actually in construction so I know how often those guys talk to each other um but I understand in the construction World there is a lot of them that have flip phones that don’t want the latest and greatest device so when they do upgrade to the greatest device Sometimes It’s tricky to help those customers right sometimes tricky to help those team members um and a lot of it comes from like an educational point on the device the app making sure they’re comfortable using it and that it doesn’t prohibit them from getting their work done so um I think what you do is really cool um so I’m excited to hear a little bit more about blue beam um and understanding you so it sounds like you’ve been with blue Beam for a long time what made you get into um support um how did you start in that role and and where did that come from um I’ve been doing support for a long time um I changed gears at a certain stage in my life and got an engineering degree um but it so happened that at that time there was it was 2008 economic downturn recession uh I was having trouble um Landing a gig and um there was a company that I wanted work for that was looking for help in their um tech support department and I thought it would be a good way to get my foot in the door and um that way once things started to pick up again I’d be in a good position to move into the engineering department and go from there um what I found out while doing that is I don’t want to be an engineer um it’s not where my personality fits I really like talking to customers um and with the you know the way that I tend to look at problems and communicate I did really well in in that department in that area it was a good fit um so it really helped me because I like working with people I like helping them solve problems I like helping them be successful in whatever they’re trying to do that’s kind of my primary motivation um but I’m very technical um and so I kind of have a skill set that puts me in a position to help people and it was just a good fit um sitting in a cubicle running simulations and tests it just it didn’t fit who I was um and so I I did well there and then things shifted and um I blue beam was just starting to take off when the company I was at was just starting to decline so it was a good timing to move into another area and and blue Beam at the time when I came over was a very small company I believe there was about 23 employees when I came over um and um so when it’s a small company like that it’s still kind of in its startup phase everyone wears a lot of hats there’s not a lot of specialization or um significant divides between teams and so um I really you know took to that well where I just kind of did everything I could and then as the company grew and expanded and we needed to um have specializations and teams to scale effectively I was always kind of a leadership voice in doing that and that just kind of progressed my career with the company as we continued to grow I continued to um make sure I was informed and educated on what we were doing and what the best choices were and that just kind of helped move my career along and um blue beam has done well over the years and as far as growth and I’ve just kind of moved right along with it and where I’m at right now is just kind of looking at the future landscape of of our industry and what do our customers need and I’m helping the C uh the company get where we need to be to provide support to those customers that’s awesome well as we know like I introduced myself earlier I am a customer success manager now at Katon but previously to this I actually was a support manager for Katon and I know particularly for Katon in general we specialize in mobile app testing right we help our developers of apps be able to test their app in the case of Blue beam it’s a very interesting use for Katon so I’m more so curious what where did the decision come in or more so how did the concept of establishing a device lab for support for blue beam originated um yeah that came from our launch of of a mobile companion app uh primarily our Flagship product is desktop very very heavy does a lot uh but um as mobile devices became more and more popular and more and more capable we were getting regular requests from uh people who are out on the construction site needing to work on their plans needing to send requests so they wanted a mobile solution that wasn’t um a desktop in the trailer they wanted their tablet they wanted to enable their phone to help as they walk to the job site be able to communicate with um the rest of the team and so we created a mobile solution to help with that um and customers liked it it grew and then um needing to support that customers would call from the job site hey I’m trying to add um some notes to this plan and share it with the team and I’m running into this issue or I have this question and we’d need to help them uh but at this point we were very we were a bit bigger we’re a bit spread out we have Regional Offices we have Global offices so we had to provide devices to all of our regional teams um which when there gets to be multiple devices different os’s physical devices get clumsy to manage at scale and so it was a while ago like six years ago when we started to look for Solutions there were emulators uh available there were um Dev there were like device lab options but everything was very Geared for testing very much about scripted testing very much about uh being able to configure an environment and spin it up and then test it where in a support organization we get a call we’re live with the customer we need to have that immediate access um to our to our app to be able to follow along with what they’re doing and and help um them find the answers they need and so being able to having to be offline and take time to do that it it doesn’t work so we were forced to continue to manage a lot of physical devices um which you know is not ideal um and that was pre-pandemic when we were running into that then the pandemic hit and all sudden the new challenge was everyone’s working from home what do we do with these do we give physical devices to every single employee we’re a sizable support team spread around the world then who manages them what’s the secur what’s the data security there there’s all of these unmanaged devices with proprietary information out there it’s just not it’s not ideal at all so I went back to looking for what Solutions were out there and it was just like years before where everything was really geared um for um you know QE testing QA testing you know scripted tests um more offline something where you have time and again I needed a a live solution and I ran um into Katon who had just introduced what you call like lightning mode that actually allowed you to be able to interface with a remote device um quickly very little lag very little delay it was very sim a nice analog to the physical device um and so we originally looked at okay we have all these physical devices we could set up our own device farm and use the Katon platform to manage them but that my it Department felt that was a bit there were some hurdles there and they’d have to staff for it and you know Katon offered other Solutions we couldn’t go with the public device solution um for data security purposes we needed our own devices but Katon offered kind of the middle ground of dedicated devices for our organization but managed by Katon in their Data Center and that was the perfect fit for us um so we’ve stopped purchasing physical devices and we’re just focusing on that because I have teams around the world using the Katon platform form and people in Europe people in Australia they’re not finding lag they’re not finding issues with it so it’s ideal for us to have these managed devices that anyone in any regional office around the world can use and it works smoothly um and it’s immediate uh and that’s kind of what brought us to uh Katon and why we chose Katon over other Solutions out there was the immediacy um and low latency of of the connection and of the platform that’s awesome Paul it sounds like Caton’s really helped your team out with what they’re trying to do and it sounds like Katon has um helped your your users as well how would you say um leveraging Katon you know for non- testing purposes how do you think that’s affected your user experience uh it’s improved it in that allows all of my team members access to the app um so it doesn’t matter if someone was issu like the problem we had before is it we didn’t think it was reasonable to in give a device or multiple devices to every team member so it became segmented to only a few team members provided support for the mobile app and any call that came in had to get transferred to them and that’s kind of that handoff is not ideal we want customers to get someone right away uh who can help them right away um so it allowed all of my team to be able to use advices um it allows all the team to get familiar with the app to answer those questions um I have a documentation team that uses that doesn’t have to be issued devices because they can just connect to Caton get all the screenshots they need for documentation create workflow guides um so it’s about offering you know the app to all of my team members wherever they are whatever indiv you know um specialized team they’re on they have access to it and also what the individual apps don’t provide is the logs like um you know Katon being a testing platform it offers a a a good um offering of accessible log files screenshots screen recording um Step recorder like so much that we can provide um information to our Engineers when we find an issue we can create documentation with by just grabbing screenshots um it’s great for a team member who’s grabs a screenshot to send to a customer it’s convenient it’s there it works well and it does that for everybody on the team that’s awesome so if I was a customer of blue beam and I’m out on the site and I’m having issue let’s say with my tablet and it’s not letting me load a document I can call Blue beam support support is going to pull up a tablet on their side and walk through the process with me and be able to help me real time yes awesome so it sounds like that’s definitely helped you know the end user feel like they have the support they know that your app is reliable even with the support added um and I’m sure that also educates them on knowing how to better use your app um so in the end that if that person has to call once and knows what to do the next time that eliminates a support call coming in for you um I think customer education is super important when it comes to support um when it comes to your customers how are you guys grading your customer satisfaction are they getting like any type of survey afterwards or how does that work out for you guys yeah we do send out a a cessat survey following interactions but the volume is weighted so heavily toward um our desktop solution that I can’t really speak to um our customer satisfaction scores for just the companion app um but I do know it’s been an improvement I know it’s really helped us um there was one particular incident where we released an update for our companion app um and customers immediately started reporting an issue with it that our QE teams didn’t catch um and what helped us is on the Katon platform we have um devices with different OS versions so we have a good selection to check from and the problem was it was in an old when the app was run on an older OS that’s where the problem was and our QE teams keep they test on physical devices um and they keep their apps updated to the latest version of the latest OS and this is how it kind of escaped their view but in support we were able to isolate the exact previous OS where this happened um give them the exact steps to reproduce give them logs for when the issue occurred this is what’s happening on the device give them all of the information they needed to then work um on resolving the issue quickly and getting a new update released that solved the problem and this was an area where kind of tech support was able to save the day because of you know the copatan platform and what we’re able to have there well that’s awesome it sounds like Caton’s definitely you know aiding both both sides right the customer and your team yeah when it comes to making sure that your team is up to dat with you know the industry and things that are changing for users how do you promote a culture of continuous Improvement for your support team um because that’s kind of my role um what all I talk about it’s it’s it’s what I’m all about is taking the next step forward as good as my team is as good as our product is there’s always the next step the next you know Peak to reach um and so I’m continually looking at what we offer and what we could offer and taking incremental steps on the way there and the thing about a culture of continual Improvement is it’s in presenting it as continual Improvement as growth I mean the team is great the people are great um and it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong it’s just there’s always that next step to take and that’s just growth and I think that helps with Buy In from from teams and stakeholders is you know that it’s it’s steps forward and not speaking poorly of what was or what is you know when talking about what’s next it’s looking at how great it will be once we get to that next accomplishment that’s awesome my next question for you is more so um understanding you know process Improvement so when you talk about thinking of the next step and making sure that the team is thinking ahead can you give us an example of a process Improvement that you’ve initiated um and that’s you know done well for you wow there’s a lot I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m continually one of the voices of innovation and change and growth so there there’s been a lot um I’ve really kind of built out this organization um to scale well and I think probably one of the biggest successes is when we were a smaller company our full website and all of its offerings were owned by the marketing department and we found that um when it was managed that way our our support materials weren’t really enough or they weren’t current enough to address um customer needs at a given time so I created a business plan for tech support taking on our own section of the website creating our own documentation having a documentation team focused purely on um the technical needs of the customer um how to articles technical troubleshooting articles user guides all of that was owned by tech support because we have that direct connection to the customer and a different voice um we’re not a you know hey try this you know this product out it’s hey you have the product and this is how to get the most of it or this is how to you know work through whatever hurdle or challenge you’re running into here’s how you can do that and we built a really successful site around that that um in support one of the one of the driving statistics or bits of data we collect is um case deflection so customers that go to the website looking for help and they find help there they don’t have to submit an email or give us a call or something like that and we’ve you know created you know we found a way to create a website that has really high case deflection making sure that customers are able to get the help they need immediately anytime of of day because it’s just information there on our site and it’s accessible um and we’ve been able to do that with um an AI backed Federated search that’s very well tuned to Industry terms like what are our customers going to say and what that means for what are what content they need um and that’s been probably one of our most successful initiatives is being able to deflect cases uh by providing a easy access to the most relevant documentation and having a vast documentation Library support articles I love them they’re so useful so helpful for everybody so we have about five minutes left Paul I do have some questions in the chat for us so I’m going to read them out loud okay okay so our first question comes from supri who wants to know is actively listening hard to build is active active listening hard to build due to security issues um and I believe that question came up when we were talking about the limitations of the team is active listening difficult because of security issues um I’m not quite sure I understand what the security issues are with that is it that customers not being able to share um the information that they need to help with if that’s um if that’s what the question is we have we understand our customers workflows and so if it’s document specific then that’s a little bit of a challenge um where but if it’s workflow related we have our own test documents and we’ll test their workflow on our documents and kind of work through it that way if it’s document specific then it’s um getting permission you know it’s in in this modern data world it’s it’s all about getting permission uh sometimes we have them redapt certain pieces of a document or extract a piece of it that they’re having trouble with that might not have um s you know the the need you know the um intellectual proper the IP information on it there’s ways to work around that um got we tend to make it work no worries my next two questions how easy was it for the team to learn and adopt using the Katon platform learning to use the desktop interface for something that’s a a touch um mobile device it took a little getting used to but um we they adapted relatively quickly I created a a good quick start guide for them with all like um explanations on what um controls to use to mimic what feature on the app it wasn’t that difficult um I’d say we were fluent using the Katon platform versus the physical device within a month awesome well my my next question I have one more after this is what does the process look like for an agent to bring up the app on a call um either having someone um loading it up on a you know web tab you know at the beginning of their day and just having it accessible or having it bookmarked so it’s quickly accessible um log in the landing page shows the devices available and click launch on the device it loads relatively quickly um few seconds it’s there’s really not much to it um it’s a you know it’s cloud-based it’s a you know web tab and either they already have it open or it’s bookmarked so it’s easily accessible like I said the landing page dashboard is the devices they just click launch on the device they need and it’s a few seconds later it’s up and running super easy the same amount of time it takes to reach into a drawer and take out a physical device love the ease of that all right Paul where our last question actually comes from Shan Barry um Sean writes thanks Paul for sharing your story your Innovation and drive to solve problems and unique ways is awesome what is it culturally at Blue beam that enables you to be

creative it’s the um it’s the permission to do it um we have um a culture of um you know do do whatever you need to do to get the the job done you’re not micromanaged there’s not a lot of strict um rules and ownership you’re really encouraged to get results um and even as we’ve grown we’ve kind of maintained that um work with who you know we have very open door policies regardless of Department talk to whoever you need to talk to um and and get done what you need it’s it’s all about results and solutions than ownership and strict you know red tape and and boundaries it’s um it’s a very openness uh atmosphere here that’s awesome that sounds like Katon one of our core values is being constantly curious and always asking questions because that’s how you know things happen yeah well Paul we are at the end of our our show here today we appreciate you so much for joining us and being a part of this and talking more so about customer support how Katon helps blue beam and how blue beam you know Works to help their customers so we appreciate you joining us today and thank you to all the viewers that you know took time to watch us and then ask some questions