Transcript
So first and foremost, let me introduce a customer of ours, Marco. He's a Senior Information Technology Manager at Temco Logistics. Marco, if you just want to give us a short, brief introduction of yourself, it would be amazing. Hi, everyone. I'm Marco Gosen, the Senior Information Technology Manager for Temco Logistics. And what we do at Temco Logistics is we are a delivery subsidiary for the Home Depot. So we basically deliver and install appliances for that company. And from the IT side, we're providing our operators with computers, phones, and just ensuring that they're able to stay online and remain productive throughout their workday. Amazing, amazing. I've actually was lucky and fortunate enough to actually visit Marco on site a few months ago. So that was actually good. I really enjoy meeting customers face to face. It was really good to meet you. My name is Jason Elias, and I'm a Senior Customer Success Manager here at Atera. I've been here for about two years, and it's in the name. I'm really here to help all our customers be successful, as cliched as that sounds. That's something I enjoy doing, and I really hope that our customers enjoy Atera as much as I enjoy teaching our customers how to use it. Okay. So let's get started. First, a bit of introduction into, and first we'll intro, have a few questions of introduction, and then we'll go into a bit of a workshop. We'll have a few videos to show you guys of how Marco's really started to use Atera's Action AI in his day-to-day work. So I think first and foremost, we'll start with the first question, is that what does quality support look like for you and your team in 2024, Marco? For us, quality support, for one, we're trying to maintain a very lean team. So that was the biggest reason that we had gone to Atera was because we love the AI capability and integration. It's almost like we have a whole nother technician that's not on the payroll. So whether it's assisting us with just closing out tickets, writing script, finding solutions, the autopilot function for our end users really helps them not have to wait for us to respond. So quality support overall is just reducing downtime for us and our end users. Amazing. So it's basically like the faster you close tickets, the faster the end users can get back to work. And at the end of the day, I always say time is money. Time is money at the end of the day. That's right. Next, we have, OK, so what are the key factors that contribute to high quality support services? The key factors that contribute to high quality support services would probably be time. I mean, everybody's time is valuable, right? Efficiency, making use of that time for quality work. And I would probably say professionalism. Yeah, I think time is definitely one of the biggest factors, like we say. And this is something that at Atera, and this is why we really jumped on the AI, was at the end of the day, the quicker you answer tickets, the quicker people start working and there's no downtime. That's kind of what we're here for. OK, cool. So this is an interesting one for you. What do you feel barriers to AI adoption is? And on the other side, what reasons to leverage AI? Barriers to AI adoption would definitely be people that are technologically challenged. A lot of them don't understand what an AI is capable of and isn't capable of. Obviously, it's not going to be able to walk your dog for you, but it can absolutely scan your computer to see what's going on with why your printer is not responding or why your computer is responding so slowly. So I think it's really just getting those teaching points going with our end users and kind of establishing that communication. So we've actually, it took us a solid month, but it's the adoption to AI has actually grown tremendously over the last couple of months that we've been using this. And reasons to leverage AI, I mean, it's like I said before, we have a very small team and we're supporting a couple of thousand users. So leveraging AI has allowed us to kind of filter out some of the smaller, repetitive questions and stay focused on the more important tasks at hand. Yeah, and I think it's as you mentioned before, I think it's adding another technician and not trying to replace anybody, but to really assist on both sides, assist the end users to try to troubleshoot themselves with an AI and for your team to use the co-pilots to help them on the back end side. Yeah. Cool. So next, what we'll do is we want to go into more of the workshop side of things. OK, so what experiences, you know, you can kind of we can kind of maybe answer one at a time here. The experiences, let's put experiences and benefits together that you saw when you started using AI in Eterra, for IT support that is. Yeah, so it's really improved our support time as far as, you know, onboarding new devices and stuff like that, for example, I'll show you in a video later, but we basically leveraged Eterra's scripting function to to kind of get devices onboarded faster and download all the necessary software and configurations. It's it's really gotten much quicker since we started using Eterra. So we love that. And the challenges of it was really just user adoption and understanding. So since we're since we're working past that now, I mean, it's becoming more of a benefit, if anything. Nice, nice, nice. Cool. OK, so what does your team's work look like today using Eterra? The team's work today is a lot of device monitoring and ticketing mostly. I mean, we've got technicians dedicated to just taking care of the queue all day. I jump in whenever I can. But that that is really the main function. We just want to be able to to manage our devices as efficiently as possible. And Eterra has helped a lot with that. And you guys do have like dedicated, I know a few customers I've spoken to that have like a dedicated network manager, dedicated cyber, cyber manager. That's something that you guys also do, correct? Correct. Yeah, we we've got people dedicated to different things, and we also kind of jump in and learn from from them, basically subject matter experts. Nice, nice. Cool. So how has your day to day changed you and your team since you started using integration, since you started integrating Eterra's Action AI? A lot less Googling and going through forums, trying to find different scripts and ways to support users. Yeah, it's we basically have a one stop shop with with this platform. It's it's fantastic. Yeah, I think I think that's that's kind of and I'll mention again, the the core of Eterra is is really having everything in one. And I think a lot of our customers enjoy having it like that, that, you know, especially with AI now, you don't have to jump to somewhere else. You might argue, but it takes, you know, five, five seconds to go there and there and there. But I think having it inside the platform with with one UI, one UX is really beneficial. And I think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's with one UI, one UX is really beneficial for for also for for training people. It's one place you can show them they can learn it. And once they learn it, you know, everything kind of works together. And I think that that's that's the real core value of Eterra is having everything together. That's easy to use. And I think AI kind of fit perfectly into that into that core of what it is. Cool. So we are going to come to the videos now. OK, so before we show one of the videos that that you have, I just want to put a caveat here that that we we record the videos because of sensitive information, guys. But sorry, these are videos that Marco recorded. So can you tell us tips and tricks for for leveraging Eterra's Action AI to boost support? Yes, some some tips and tricks. Obviously, the first one was, you know, utilizing the scripting as opposed to just sticking to, I think, is Microsoft's autopilot that that we were using before. The scripting has basically made it much faster to onboard a new device. We're not on phone calls with people, new employees or current employees that have new laptops and they're like, I turned this thing on like three hours ago. Why isn't it working? Yeah, that is really sped that up. And another another tip is the basically the copilot in the ticketing system that helps us generate responses a lot faster for for standard questions. I mean, if if you're keeping your knowledge base updated with, you know, those frequently asked questions, you can post articles in there internally or even have them available to your to your users. That's going to keep your AI as knowledgeable as possible with with your current structure and really helps get those answered questions answered faster. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think I think that's that's something that I think we actually learned from you guys was the was integrating the knowledge based articles with the AI. I think what that creates is also a very personalized version of a terror that, you know, your company's version of a terror version. It's all the same, but but essentially the KBs is making it very personalized. So and again, this is something that that I tell customers during the onboarding processes is that, you know, at the at the initial part of of a terror of implementing a terror and configuration of a terror. That's where all the the the the good things need to be put in place then and uploading your KBs, moving them from maybe, I don't know, an Excel spreadsheet with links or whatever system you guys are using, putting it into a terror kind of down the line is going to save a lot of time when when end users are going to ask questions in the knowledge base. So it's not coming to you. It's not going. And again, I've mentioned this to to a lot of customers again, is that this can be for any department, like any department can give you a KB and basically implement a frequently asked questions and basically the marketing team, whatever team can can can really get involved here to make the entire organization more streamlined with with with questions that they get every day. So what we'll do is I'm going to share my screen with a video recording and then we'll have a look at what Marco's done in his platform and some tips and tricks in this video. I'm going to stop sharing here. Let's share a screen. First, I want to show you guys is how is the audio? I just want to check. Is it echoing for you, Marco? Is it fine? Was it echoing? A little bit. It was. OK, let me try and share the entire screen here. Let's try this. Interesting. Let's try again. And it will bring us to this AI page. So it has a few example prompts that we can, you know, give it the AI. For example, I can't access Google. So once it processes that request. You know, it searches the knowledge base articles that we have posted. And then it gives some suggestions on how to resolve that issue. So I'm obviously able to access Google right now. But if we click on this sandwich menu up here in the top left corner, you know, we have our AI assistant and recent chats that you've had. You can always go back to another chat that you've had, another common one that we get on a computer is slow. So first, it searches the knowledge base. We don't have anything posted there. So it goes to its default and gives some suggestions based off of what it already knows. Another cool feature that we have is tickets. So you can see all of your previously open tickets, the status of it. You know, you can open it up and see what resolution came of it. The self service portion allows users to download any IT approved software that we've made available to them. So all they have to do is like get and it will install that program for them. And lastly, we have the knowledge base, which is where we, as the IT host articles, basically have frequently asked questions and things of that nature. Obviously, as a net, ours are, we also have our internal knowledge base here. And it also is the public knowledge base. Cool. Yeah, so I think, so I see if it was echoing for everybody. Is it fine? I think it was echoing. I'm not sure. Sorry about the echoing. If it is echoing, guys, I apologize. Yeah, I'll see if I can do better for the next video we share. But let's go back to the media. Okay. The next one we have is, so how have you streamlined your support processes with AI? And again, I think we'll notice that a lot of them are going to be like linked together. But it's fine. I think it's very good to share how you're doing it. Yeah. Yeah, so kind of like that video went through was we created a desktop icon on everybody's computers that we manage. And it's just right there in your face. So if you need IT support, you can just double click that. And you can chat with a bot or you can check on your currently open tickets, download software that we have uploaded into that repository. So I think that that part alone, that autopilot function of Eterra has really streamlined our support processes and made some of our users a little more self-sufficient. So it's been good for us. Yeah, I think that software part also is extremely powerful to allowing what software is allowed and not allowed to be installed. And I know you can put in policies and things like that, but I think having it like this, you can basically control exactly, not just a free for all. You don't want to stop people from downloading things totally. But in this case, it is a security risk. So having specified program that you allow is extremely helpful, I think, for exactly like you said. And that's something that I think is where this extra technician comes is self-help. I think a lot of people these days do want to first try to help themselves before they come to, you know, yeah, we get those guys who are like, OK, and I thought when I was with you and we do the same here, I go to the IT guy, pull him quickly. But essentially, there is a lot of people who do essentially want to help themselves before they start asking around because it's quicker. If you can get an answer quicker, if you want to install software in a second, you don't want to go and ask, Marco, please install Zoom for me when you're just going to the autopilot and install it from there. Cool. So the next video is of, I just want to make sure, I hope it doesn't echo again. The next one is actually going to be on what you mentioned a bit earlier in terms of the automations and scripts. So let's take a look at that. There you go. So this is how Terra and the AI Automation company utilizes Zoom for you. And now we're going to move on to how it's made life a little easier for our technicians. So we're a fast company, but we try to keep our IT team very lean. And one of the ways that it's helped us do that is through the patch management and IT automation. And originally, we had designed our system to utilize Microsoft's Autopilot function to automatically install all the necessary software and configurations to our computers. But we started to experience that, you know, sometimes it was pretty quick and other times it was really starting to experience latency up to several hours. And this was our workaround around that. So... Okay, I think what we'll do is I think we'll speak rather because it's stuttering. So maybe we can both run through it together here. Yeah, I think that's better. So yeah, through the patch management and IT automation, this is basically all of the functions that we have a Terra do for us as, you know, these new computers are onboarded. Some of them, well, it's really all of them have been actually very quick. It acts immediately as soon as that a Terra agent is installed on them. It starts running these scripts, you know, we have stuff for iTunes, getting things NIST compliant. That's kind of one of our next initiatives. And then the script database, you know, this is a bunch of stuff that we had created. They also have the shared script library that you can view from other Terra users. But I think that our favorite one is our major network security feature that we wrote this year. This XML file is basically a script that we run on each computer and we don't give out our Wi-Fi password to any of the users anymore. We basically started broadcasting a new SSID with higher security levels and everything. And we just have them connect to the guest network and let us know when they're ready. And we just run the script in the background. And then they're able to connect to the main network. So that feature has been really good about, you know, helping us maintain the highest security levels that we can possibly achieve. Got you. Got you. Cool. Let's go back. Firstly, apologies to everyone for the stuttering. I think we'll do the same for the next video. Cool. Let's continue. Let's go. Okay, cool. So how does the Terra's Action AI accelerate resolution times, ensure accuracy, and enhance end user satisfaction? Yeah, so with resolution times, obviously end users are not waiting for a technician to respond to a ticket. Obviously, when we're having a high volume sort of day, we're not able to we as the technicians are not able to respond to them right away. We could be on a support call or, you know, working on another major project. So there's obviously going to be some delays. But the autopilot function and AI allow them to get faster answers. And it does ensure accuracy because it asks them, like, does this answer your question? And they can say no, at which point the AI will basically open a ticket for us and say, like, okay, I'm going to transfer you to a live technician. And, you know, sometimes it hits the nail on the head and gets them taken care of before we have to get to it. Or sometimes we have to jump in. But the possibility of, you know, not having to take time to answer a few questions that we've probably answered 15 times that day is definitely beneficial. Yeah, I think if you can just comment a bit on how it's helped also your technicians, the guys who you say are sitting on the queues all day in terms of the copilot, maybe how you can maybe explain a bit how it's helped them in their day to day. Oh, yeah. So the copilot's great because from the ticketing system, and I think we have a video to kind of go through that as well, the ticketing system can actually click on, they can click on copilot, and it'll give them a brief summary of what's going on. Sometimes the tickets are like email chains, and we really don't want to take the time to scroll all the way down to the end of the thread to figure out exactly what is going on in the whole thing. So it can write a quick summary for you. The copilot can also generate a response. So it can save the technician time in the sense that they don't have to sit there and think about how do I have to word this professionally. You know, the copilot just takes care of all of that. So yeah, more benefits there. It's been good. Yeah, and I think that's the value I saw when, you know, obviously the product team came and showed us, and that's how I saw how there's actually a process and a flow that actually, you know, we've worked on, which is basically have all, most of the questions being filtered by the AI and answer the questions that are able to be answered there, and then ones that can't be that need escalation or that the AI can't answer will come to you, and then you then also have the copilot to assist you. So it's both sides, and I think it's also beneficial for people that are learning. You know, people that are learning IT can use the copilot, you know, to kind of assist them. They can kind of, okay, what do they think the issue could be? Maybe they can, you know, test themselves and then ask the AI afterwards and see if they came to the same conclusion. And what we'll do is we're going to do the same thing now. So if we will just do a bit of, we'll mute the sound because I think some people are getting echoes, some people are not getting echoes. So let's just, we'll be talking about this video too. Okay, perfect. Okay, final video, let's go. Okay, mute. Okay, here we go. All right, so this is the user interface that we see for our ticketing system. You can easily assign technicians if you can already tell who's going to take care of it, or if they know that they're going to take care of it, just click right there. That kind of helps us reduce, you know, people working on the same thing at the same time. You can easily change the status right there from the homepage. Once you click on it, I mean, that's really where you drill down to the details. So the generate reply function, I like a lot. It's right there in the text box. And the AI will actually generate a response to the ticket that we can use that, or the copilot button in the upper right. That one's first going to, you know, write up a quick summary for you. You can understand what's going on in the ticket. And that was another thing that we struggle with sometimes, is understanding what the users are trying to convey, like their issue. They're putting in terminology that we don't really understand. So copilot's helped us with that a bit. Yeah, when it comes down to the responses, that pulled it straight from our, one of our KB articles. So you're able to just copy and paste it right there into the reply box. Very cool. Yeah, I think you can see the time save of multiple ends of getting, you know, having the ticket coming in, getting a summary to just generating a reply, and getting what was in literal seconds, which is really where I think the time value is. Right, absolutely. I think this one here. I was thinking about it, but this one's also coming straight out of one of our KB articles. Yeah, I think, again, like we discussed before, the real value of uploading KBs is really where you're going to see, again, and I'll mention it again, a very customized version of Atera for both the end users and your team. Absolutely. You know, also, I see that there's a sentiment that we have that you kind of went over, but at the end there, which kind of goes through the, I think it's the last comment, and looks at what the sentiment of the ticket was. If it was neutral, happy, angry, we'll kind of do things like that too, just as like added features, you know, on the AI side. Cool, and I think we have one more slide left, then we'll go into Q&A. We're right on time. The last question is, how can Atera's ActionAI help an IT team support a fast-growing company? I know you guys yourselves were in that stage of, you know, fast-growing, and I think it's very important to have infrastructure, IT infrastructure, that's kind of at the core, because if you don't have IT infrastructure and your company's growing, you're going to be in for big trouble. So maybe you can comment a bit on that, I think, from personal experience that you guys had. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been with Temco Logistics for approaching three years, and in that time, we've probably grown about 300%. It's been crazy. So obviously, one of the major concerns with, you know, such a fast-growing company is the scalability of our team, right? I'm not able to add technicians quite as quickly as we're able to pop up buildings, but at the same time, we found that we outgrew our last RMM, because, you know, when we were at a couple hundred computers, it was fine, it was working great, until we started approaching, you know, a certain threshold, and things really started slowing down, and we started chopping around, and we came across Atera. Now, what we like most about this is, one, it makes us very scalable, but also, with this user interface, I mean, it's really easy to train technicians on this platform, to where, you know, all they really need is like a basic knowledge, and we've already trained two interns and two full-time technicians on this just this year, and now they're flying with it. So it's very easy to learn, very easy to work with, and it's going to help us probably moving forward in the future as we continue to grow. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think you really hit, I think, in the whole conversation that we had, you really hit the nail on the head in terms of, you know, what we at Atera are doing, how we modeled ourselves differently, in terms of the pricing model that we have allows exactly like you guys to scale, and I think the value is there, and then adding the all-in-one, adding the AI, you know, I think a bit biased, but I think Atera is going to be huge one day. But yeah, I think what we'll do now is let's go to some Q&A. So I think what we'll do is, I think there'll be some Q&A for me, some Q&A for you, so we will try and split it evenly. Okay, so the first one I will take is, what's the difference between Atera's co-pilot and auto-pilot? Auto-pilot basically is what Marco showed at the beginning, where there's a user portal or service portal or customer portal, if you're an MSP, internal IT, that's where the end users of the company or the customers will go, and that's where they'll experience the AI, that's the auto-pilot part, okay? If you think of it as an auto-pilot, it's running on the backend, many of the technicians are working on it, it's all the AI on that side. When you shift over to the co-pilot, that's when you've got the AI assisting the pilot, and the pilot in this case is a technician. So that's kind of the differences between the two. So I hope that's understandable. Again, I think they're very much intertwined. I see it as the auto-pilot feeds into the co-pilot, but that doesn't mean that the co-pilot can't be used. There's alerts that are generated in Atera, and those can be troubleshooted without the end user doing anything. These are more device-based issues, overheating, a basic example, but overheating or things like that, that Atera will pick up, and the co-pilot is then able to assist with those particular issues. So again, I hope that that explained it well enough. Okay, let's go to another one. Okay, that was answered. How have your employees... Okay, this is a good one, I think. How have your employees' reactions been to using AI to solve their tickets? User adoption was definitely a challenge at first, but it's been improving. What I basically did was I kind of politically worked my way around, and I started training with our regional managers around the country and kind of got them on board. And then I also went through it with our operations excellence team because they're already traveling around the country and opening buildings, training new staff members, so I figured, why not leverage that? But user adoption has actually improved significantly over the last couple months. Just explaining, as long as we take the time to explain what the AI can and can't do, that really kind of helps them understand and process things a little better. And yeah, it's really seen a good jump over the last couple months. Yeah, for sure. I think it is a challenge in general. I mean, us probably, me and you, me, the audience, are probably sitting there being like, wow, this is amazing stuff. But for people who... I mean, I'll give an example. In the trip that I was with you, I visited another company and we asked some end employees what they thought, and they were like, I hate AI. I mean, if you have that from the beginning, it's like, okay, then you need to... And again, I think this is also something that my team will work on is really helping you, our customers, help your employees because eventually, or essentially, this is something that helps everybody, that helps the company as a whole, that helps you guys as technicians to have time for... I see someone in the chat said more time for projects or security-based things. And again, like I said, really, it is a challenge, and I know it because I saw it. But I think that it's a thing that my team as the customer experience and customer success teams will be working on trying to assist our customers when it's in beta still, the autopilot, but when it does come out to assist our customers to get the user adoption for the end users and for MSPs, their customers, to start really getting the value of it because we see it as a whole company-wide shift. It's not just for an IT team. This is a company-wide shift of getting answers to most people today rarely work on their computers. Most people are on computers the whole day. So having answers quickly for them is beneficial for the entire organization. Okay, let's see what we have. I think this is a nice one. Okay, what do you think in your professional experience, the top three skills every IT manager needs to work on in today's IT world? Patience. Patience is definitely number one. That's with your technicians and with the users. Number two would definitely be just taking the time to understand. Sometimes you have to understand that maybe this person doesn't understand that. And you have to consider both sides always. And I guess it's really just learning when to just take a step back and understand when do I need to attack and when do I need to delegate. So those are some skills that'll definitely help IT managers, I think. I think that last point was delegation. I think it's very important. It's something that I see in IT managers and IT people that I've met all want to help. I really feel this. I've visited numerous companies and most of the IT managers that I've spoken to, they're helpful people by nature. And what happens with that is that you tend to, somebody like we keep saying, will pull you and you pulled away from your work, but you wanna help them. So you don't say no, or you don't say, can you log a ticket? It's like, okay, I'll help you. And in customer success, we have the same types of people the same types of, I don't wanna call it an issue because it's by nature. We just wanna help people. And I think that's something that it's extremely important in your field and also in mine, if I wanna give a nice correlation is learning to delegate, learning to say no. And again, like you said, helping the end users help themselves. So I think me and you are very similar in those things. I'm trying to help customers help themselves. You're trying to help your employees help themselves. And I think it's in our nature to help people. So I think that last one in delegation, I think is extremely important and a very good skill to learn in general is not try to take everything on yourself and really try and move it around to people who maybe are the subject matter experts rather than trying to be the one person who's trying to help everybody. All right. I think, okay, let's see. I think we have, okay. What's the difference? You've answered that one. Okay. We have three minutes left. Maybe we'll have time for one more question. Putting aside AI, what would you say is Eterra's biggest innovation? When, in your opinion, other than AI? Other than AI. Other than AI, the fact that they're constantly improving and there's a whole section of Eterra where users are making suggestions and if things get upvoted enough, they'll actually work that into development and get it posted. So it's kind of one of those things where you have to constantly keep up with your notifications. I'll do that once every other week just to see what's new. And yeah, we actually had one, I think, recently that was upvoted enough to start getting moved into production. But it is nice knowing that they're actually taking the user's recommendations into account. That's a pretty cool feature that you're actually being listened to. Cool. Yeah, that's something that we really try to be is really customer-centric. And I think it's an organizational thing to be customer-centric. Not to say customer-centric, but actually be customer-centric, I think is a challenge. But I think, again, I'm biased, but I think we do it quite well here. I think that's it. Sorry if I didn't get to all your questions. I just want to take this time to say a huge thank you to Marco. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate the time that you put in today. I'm sure the audience really enjoyed it. I know that everybody likes learning from each other, especially in this space. We're all here to help each other. And I think that's very important for us. And it's very important that you are able to be here and share your experiences of Eterra. So I just want to say a huge thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Cool. And for everybody else, thank you for joining. I think I might be the last. I'm not sure. If I am, thank you for coming. See my Eterra hat. I think you guys can get this at the swag store too. So I'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much. Have an amazing evening or day.
