Ongoing supply chain disruptions have not only made product shortages and delivery delays the norm, but they have also exposed the internal weaknesses in many companies’ supply chains — especially as it pertains to poor customer communication and transparency.

Diana Eagen is the Director of Sales and Order-to-Cash at Esker. She joined hosts Scott Luton and Greg White for a livestream to describe how customer service automation can be utilized by B2B companies to deliver an Amazon-like experience — transforming both supply chain management and giving customers what they want in 2023 and beyond.

In this conversation, Diana, Scott, and Greg discuss:

• Why visibility, communication, and self-service options are so critically important to the customer experience

• Practical examples that illustrate how automation can improve customer communication and supply chain performance at the same time

• Where AI-powered tools are being incorporated to automate visibility and manage changes

Intro/Outro (00:03):

Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the voice of global supply chain. Supply Chain Now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today’s critical issues, the challenges and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on Supply Chain Now.

Scott Luton (00:33):

Hey. Hey. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Scott Luton and Greg White here with you on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today’s livestream. Gregory, how are we doing?

Greg White (00:41):

Quite well, Scott. How are we doing?

Scott Luton (00:44):

We are doing well. I feel like I’m talking bad grammar now after our prep show.

Greg White (00:49):

I know. I think we need to watch our grammar and our language.

Scott Luton (00:53):

We try hard. But, Greg, hey, on the heels of a great episode yesterday, we got a great show lined up today.

Greg White (01:00):

I’m looking forward to this.

Scott Luton (01:00):

I am too. We are focused on – lots of P’s here – the Powerful Potential of Practically Applied Automation. And we’re going to be gaining insights from a business leader with an organization doing big, big things in industry. Greg, it should be one heck of a conversation, huh?

Greg White (01:16):

The PPPAA. It couldn’t be better than that, right? You and I may have gotten a little sneaky peaky at what we’re going to talk about today and it’s really interesting. You know, I love automation. I think there’s nothing to apologize anymore for automation with the generational shift that’s going on in the workforce. And I think it makes us better and allows humans to do human things.

Scott Luton (01:37):

Yes. It opens up big old new doors and windows of opportunity.

Greg White (01:42):

Bingo. I like that. Yes.

Scott Luton (01:43):

That’s a very scientific term.

Greg White (01:44):

You used proper grammar. It’s colloquial. There’s the word for the day.

Scott Luton (01:48):

I’m going to look up in the dictionary what that means, but we’ll save that for another time. Beyond what Greg said, because it is one of our favorite topics here, with, really, one of our favorite organizations I’ve done a lot of different shows with. But get ready, folks, we want to hear from you as well. Let us know in the chat your take on things we talk about here today. And with that said, Greg, we’ve got Jonathan, and Amanda, and Josh, all thus far in the chat. Great. Welcome everybody. And we look forward to hearing your take.

Greg White (02:15):

Look at Josh’s weather report, though. I think you got to share that.

Scott Luton (02:19):

“Good morning from a rainy and 3 lonely degrees -“

Greg White (02:23):

Three Celsius degrees, I think. Look at him being international, though, and sharing with the world what it feels like. So, I will share a weather report also from Zurich, Switzerland where my youngest daughter is at – study away camp, as I call it – study abroad. It is snowing and less than zero degrees Celsius, minus 12 Celsius.

Scott Luton (02:47):

I hope she took a couple coats. And we look forward to learning a lot more about her adventures.

Greg White (02:51):

These poor kids from the South, they go to a place that is above the capital of virtually every state in the union, including the ones in Minnesota and Wisconsin. So, just to give you a perspective from the American continent, these are parts of the world that most of us in America won’t live in. It’s very cold and that’s where most of Europe starts. Geography is a powerful thing.

Scott Luton (03:17):

Yes. More tonight in the 11:00 report. Before we bring on our guest, Greg, I mentioned Jonathan, a pride of Louisiana with us. Jonathan, I think I saw a new recognition or certification on social that you added to your inventory. So, if you get a chance, I’d love for you to share that with us here today. And congratulations. Okay. Greg, are you ready to bring on our esteemed guest here today?

Greg White (03:38):

I am. Yes. I just wanted to check outside and make sure that it was still tropical.

Scott Luton (03:42):

Still tropical on the island. Yes. Greg, time to get to work. I want to bring in our featured guest here today. Our guest brings more than two decades to the table of experience and expertise helping organizations improve their productivity, efficiency, and environmental impact, amongst other things. She’s got a passion for eliminating those pesky manual processes while helping customers decrease costs within the order-to-cash cycle. So, with all of that said, I want to welcome in Diana Eagen, Director of Sales for Order to Cash Solutions at Esker. Hey. Hey. Diana, how are you doing?

Diana Eagen (04:18):

Good, Scott. How are you guys?

Scott Luton (04:20):

Wonderful. Greg, I want to make sure we have Diana’s check mark and stamp of approval for some of our grammar as we are opening the show today, Diana.

Greg White (04:30):

Thank you for being here to check us. So, you’re doing double duty here, Diana. You’re going to share all of your knowledge about order-to-cash and procurement and all of these things, but also perhaps there are some people in the audience who have some grammar questions. And why would you particularly be able to answer that?

Diana Eagen (04:49):

I can be the grammar police if you’d like me to be today. No problem.

Scott Luton (04:53):

Greg and Diana are alluding to in a previous lifetime years ago, she spent a little bit of time as an English teacher. Which, we need a lot more of that background in supply chain industry. Of course, that was before she was moving mountains and doing big things in global business. But, hey, we love our teachers.

Scott Luton (05:10):

So, Diana and Greg, I’ve got a fun warm up question that I want to start with before we dive into some of your expertise and perspective. So, on this date, on February 28, 1983, it was the date of the record smashing finale of M*A*S*H which aired on CBS. Folks, it pulled in a remarkable record setting 77 percent of all T.V. viewers. Now, as we mentioned in the pre-show, a lot has changed since then, Greg and Diana, because, of course, the world has arguably, most folks are getting their content streaming versus television these days. But that aside, what is one show, be it television or digital media, you name it, streaming that you have been addicted to from start to finish. Folks in the comments, I love to get your take too. So, Diana, lead us off, what’s one show?

Diana Eagen (06:00):

This is an easy one for me. It’s been over 50 seasons on the Food Network, Chopped. I have never missed an episode of Chopped since, probably, when it come out 2009, 2010, something like that.

Scott Luton (06:14):

I love the creativeness and the competition. And usually three courses, right?

Diana Eagen (06:19):

Three. And it gives me ideas of what food I can make when I have nothing in the house.

Greg White (06:25):

Are you serious? Because I always have nothing in the house. I’ve never seen this. I’m not even sure I’ve heard of it. I’m sure I’ve heard of it.

Scott Luton (06:32):

All right. So, Chopped, that’s a good one. And I appreciate you sharing that. Greg, I can’t wait to hear yours.

Greg White (06:38):

The Sopranos, 100 percent . That was such a trendsetting show. First of all, it was the first anti-hero as heroes show. And, of course, that has become the great boom of our times. You want to talk about waiting, having to wait, not only was it back in the day when you had to wait for the episode on Sunday night, but also there were times when it was a-year-and-a-half or almost two between seasons, because David – what’s his name? – who did that was such a strange dude. And he like torturing, absolutely torturing, us. That is one. And there were many. M*A*S*H was one that I watched with my family. Truly one of the funniest shows of all time also, M*A*S*H, if you’ve ever seen it. Just totally irreverent.

Scott Luton (07:23):

So, on your first one, Greg, The Sopranos, of course, Rolling Stone named it, I think, the best T.V. show of all time. And then, going back to yours, Diana, Katherine and Amanda – kind of behind the scenes helping to make production happen as always – they both love Chopped. And when I think about Chopped – if I’m not mistaken. I’m not a T.V. historian – Diana, I think that was one of the first kind of competitive cooking shows. And now they’re everywhere, right?

Diana Eagen (07:46):

Absolutely. I love it. I’m obsessed.

Scott Luton (07:49):

All right.

Greg White (07:49):

How do you have 50 seasons? How long has it been on? When did it start?

Diana Eagen (07:53):

Mid to late 2000s.

Greg White (07:55):

Okay. So, a season must be fairly short, right?

Scott Luton (07:59):

You’re going to check that out, Greg, and we’re going to circle back and get your critical analysis of that. We’re about to dive into our global business discussion, but I got to share this. TSquared – who holds the fort down for us on YouTube says – “As a Toastmaster, I appreciate all the Grammarian insight.” Well, TSquared, thank you for that. And thank you for being here as always. Okay.

Scott Luton (08:17):

So, Diana and Greg, as much as we love T.V. history, we’ve got a great topic here today. And, Diana, where we want to start, you know, you’re out there doing business with the movers and shakers, I’d love to kind of hear what you’re seeing out in industry as well as what are some things that maybe business leaders are struggling with or prioritizing to tackle. Your thoughts, Diana.

Diana Eagen (08:36):

Struggling with keeping up. I mean, keeping up with customer expectations, mainly within the buying process. Consumers, we don’t expect to use a different website or an app to buy or pay or track deliveries, or get product information, and any of that, to submit tickets or complaints. And likewise, B2B buyers expect a single point of entry experience these days. Then, I would say, at minimum at least have full visibility of the relationship with the seller. So, they’re struggling because we’ve got all these, like, procurement and B2B buyers who have these personal experiences as a consumer. Thank goodness for the Amazon experience, because this is how they now want to buy in the B2B buying experiences.

Diana Eagen (09:28):

I was talking to a customer service manager in the med device space the other day and she’s like, “I thought we were doing really great with automating order confirmations and shipping updates.” But, now, the expectation is like omnichannel ordering, and everything needs to be real time, and they want a mobile experience. And she’s just like, “All I’m doing is trying to struggle to keep up and help customers understand and to give them what they expect in terms of information.” So, to answer your question, I mean I’m hearing that from everybody, it’s just trying to keep up. Just to keep up with those customer expectations. That’s really what they’re facing right now.

Scott Luton (10:11):

Diana, what a great starting point. Expectations, demands, the new table stakes. Greg, what’d you hear there so much that Diana shared right there in that response?

Greg White (10:21):

Well, what I heard was, Where the heck have these people been? It has been realistic, not any particular company, but where have we been as an industry, Diana, that we are just really en masse coming to this conclusion because these kind of capabilities have been available to companies for nearly a decade, right? I feel like we should have woken up ages ago.

Diana Eagen (10:43):

We should have. We haven’t. They’re still manually doing it.

Greg White (10:48):

Yeah. And, you know, I think of back in the day when e-commerce was really getting started, the sporting goods companies started with a company that was called G something. I can’t even remember. But it became eBay Enterprises, which was an organization that could just set you up with a website. Think back to 2006 to 2010, every sporting goods company in the country’s site looked exactly the same except for their logo and their colors. And they were selling online in relatively efficient fashion. And I was always stunned, Diana, that so many more companies didn’t catch up with that. I can see the manufacturers, they weren’t selling to consumers. And they probably didn’t even think about the fact that their procurement professionals would want that. But more and more – and I’ve been calling it for about ten years now – amplifying the experience. We need to be giving people the B2B experience that they are getting in the B2C world, consumer world. And why not?

Scott Luton (11:52):

So, Diana, I love your passion, by the way, of eliminating needless manual processes. We might get to that in a second. But, Diana, first off, do you want to respond to what Greg said? And then, we’re going to move into the rest of the conversation.

Diana Eagen (12:04):

Greg is spot on because we are in a place now where organizations, regardless of who you’re doing business with, whether you’ve got the small guy or you’re doing business with Walmart, the expectation is the same. They want the human connection. They want it to be a central part of that strong kind of customer experience. But they also want the value of having automated customer communication and having, like Greg was mentioning, the self-service, the e-commerce tools, the things that can kind of strike that perfect balance between a personal connection and then the kind of proactive lightning fast response times that people expect today.

Scott Luton (12:50):

Let me share a couple quick. So, “Ted Allen -” going back to Chopped, Christopher says, “- is the best host.” Clay points out Radar, who was typecast forever, kind of like Costanza from Seinfeld. That’s a great call out there. And then, back to what y’all are both saying, I think you mentioned a single point of entry, Diana. I’m not going to name names, but the airline that I fly on mostly, their app, you can do anything with it. It has overhauled and transformed the customer experience. Remember the battle days where you had to go through an agent a lot of times, and, man, you had to wait on the phone? I mean, it’s really changed a lot of that. And to both of y’all’s point, that’s the expectation these days. Even though some companies are resisting futilely, it’s going to happen. Let’s just say that, it’s going to happen. Go ahead and get with it. Embrace it, lean in. It’s what your customers want.

Scott Luton (13:42):

All right. So, moving along, let’s talk about the why for a second. Man, both of y’all really set the table nicely. So, this might sound like a stupid question but I always think defining the why is really critical because a lot of folks, me included, make a lot of assumptions as human. So, Diana, why improve visibility, communication, and self-service options for customers? Why is that critically important these days?

Diana Eagen (14:04):

Well, I think, first, it goes with saying that we need to say that something like automation or self-service options might seem counterintuitive to service, taking people out of that kind of problem solving equation. So, I just wanted to kind of start there because when we talk about folks that I talk to on a daily basis and why they haven’t done this sooner, why they haven’t done it ten years ago, it’s for that reason, the fear that they’re not going to be able to provide their customers with what they need. But we are so far from tech and AI. And all that has come such a long way since the days of, you know, desperately trying to reach a human on the other end of an automated voice recording. I mean we’re so far from that.

Diana Eagen (14:52):

So, why is because customers expect it. They expect the early insights into all these supply chain shortages. They expect to understand potential shipping delays. They want your inventory transparency. That’s what they want. I had a customer, a manufacturer here in the Midwest, but he put it perfectly. He’s like, “Well, empathy is nice and the customer appreciates the we’re sorry that we won’t get his parts to him by Friday. Empathy without action is empty.” He said, “The customers want communicated in concrete steps. And they need to make sure that they get everything they need to meet their needs.” So, customers want you to field all their inbound inquiries and then they want to communicate exactly what to expect and by what date. That’s the why.

Scott Luton (15:44):

Empathy without action is – what was that?

Diana Eagen (15:46):

He said, empathy without action is empty.

Scott Luton (15:50):

Oh, I love that. All right. Greg, you’re nodding your head as well. Speak to what we just heard there.

Greg White (15:54):

So, why is it critically important? One, generational shift. The people that wanted to talk to people are leaving the workforce at 10,000 a day, and an additional 3.1 million extra left in 2021. I don’t even know how many extra left in 2022, the baby boomers. And the expectations have shifted with that generational shift. And two, Diana, you made me think of a company that I worked for. And we got an award from E&Y or Deloitte Touche, or somebody like that, for customer service. And you know what we did? We celebrated for about 40 seconds and then we said we are terrible at serving our customers initially if we have to be that good at customer service. So, why ruin their experience just so we can have empathic, engaged and, of course, very caring people involved in fixing our screw ups. Stop screwing up. And seriously, as a company, that’s what we went about doing. We didn’t try to win that award again. You don’t want to win a customer service award. In those days, you used to be proud of that. But I think what some people did was they shifted the paradigm and they shifted their point of view and discovered that that was indicative of a problem, not a strength, a weakness in the business.

Scott Luton (17:17):

Man, Greg, we’re talking about the wonder twin powers activate in the pre-show. Both of y’all are bringing the heat today. I love it. So, Diana, you just kind of touched on that quote, your manufacturing customer. Let me make sure I get it right here. Empathy without action is empty, and there’s so much truth to that.

Greg White (17:36):

You haven’t said it yet. That is definitely a t-shirt-ism.

Scott Luton (17:39):

Oh, absolutely, Greg. Yes. Jonathan loves it. Amanda loves a few others. So, that’s definitely one of the first t-shirt-isms today. So, I want to keep going down that path here maybe with some other examples. So, generally speaking, taking the conversation out a little more broadly, how are you seeing automation, Diana, improve customer communication and overall supply chain performance? What else are you seeing in terms of practical examples?

Diana Eagen (18:03):

Well, first is actually what Greg was saying earlier, in the back office and just fixing all those errors, not screwing up to begin with. So, these customer service and back office tasks can significantly benefit from automation. For example, supply chain processes contain all these documents, which you guys know, so we’ve got delivery orders ,and dock receipts, and bills of lading, and seaway bills, and the list goes on and on. So, employees in customer service and various departments are continually storing and processing these documents and manually entering for various reasons. And it’s ridiculously time consuming. It’s a manual task. People fat finger and screw things up when they’re putting these things in the system. It inhibits businesses from reaching any level of operational excellence. It’s so manual.

Diana Eagen (18:57):

So, heaven forbid, a customer calls and wants a copy of a signed BOL as proof so they can pay their invoice. I mean this is a scenario we literally hear about all the time. I call it the swivel chair. It’s I’m going to look in the inventory system, then I’m going to go look in the ERP, and then I got to check this, and then I got to check with et cetera. It’s just this back and forth to try to get them the information that they’re looking for. So, you’re seeing examples of automation involving tasks like this in the data capture. Not just that though, then there’s the understanding of the information, kind of reading of the document. Then, there’s the element of automating and sending that information, the document or what have you, to the relevant person or to the customer. So, there’s a lot on that kind of back office customer service side of things where it’s really impacting. But then, there’s also on the customer side, too, where you’re able to make better decisions and get the tracking information, and those types of things. So, I mean, generally speaking, there’s just a lot of impact both in back office as well as for the buyer.

Scott Luton (20:15):

Greg, I’m going to get to pull you in here, but what I’m hearing there, one of the things, is effective practical automation. We talked about this a thousand times before. Not only are you making your team member’s day easier, but you’re making your customer’s day easier. Greg, chime in on what you heard there from Diana.

Greg White (20:33):

I think that goes to the expectations of pretty much every worker. It’s not just your customers that want it to be frictionless, it’s your employees, it’s whoever your trading partners are and whoever is on your team. I mean, why can’t it be easy? You have all the data or can have all the data, you can avail yourself of these services and solutions that provide you with that data. And then, you can make it as easy as maybe monitoring only exceptions, not having to monitor every single transaction, every proof of delivery or ASN, did it get delivered?

Greg White (21:07):

I think back to the days – we must confess that we’re in that sort of painful realization stage right now -we were so efficient at a company. And it makes me think back to this company. We were so terrible at so many things. In fact, we were a terrible retailer. Thankfully we got bought by someone who was much better. But we had all these internal processes that were so enabling, they were so frictionless that allowed us to be so much better. There were some that were highly manual. One we called expediting, which was you sent the PO, then you called to confirm that they received the PO. Scott, you’ve heard my mantra, the first and probably best guidance I’ve ever gotten in the business of supply chain, which is, to assume everyone will fail you. So, we developed this process where we would send the PO, then call to confirm that they had received the PO. Then, we would call to confirm that they had the materials, then that they had scheduled the picking, then that they had actually done the picking, then that they had got it to the dock, they had got it on the truck, and et cetera.

Greg White (22:07):

This was before ASNs, Diana. EDI existed but it was in that kind of nascent stage where you couldn’t really trust it because it still was a manual process of executing. So, those things have all been enabled via automation and data sharing. And I just want you to know, Diana, that I’m really thankful for helping me break out of that mindset.

Scott Luton (22:29):

So, Diana, really quick, respond to what we heard there and then we’re going to move. I’m going to pull in a couple quick comments and we’ll keep moving.

Diana Eagen (22:34):

It’s unbelievable how similar even the folks I talk to today, we’re not talking about mom and pops, we’re talking about billion dollar organizations, are still in the same place. I don’t want to get into all the detail, but, unfortunately, a lot of the things that even were automated previously, maybe again ASNs, et cetera, order acknowledgements, well, now they can’t do because they have such allocation issues, inventory, and just visibility into all of that. They don’t want to automate those messages going out because they don’t know if the data is right. So, they’re pulling back in and not have a lot of that visibility. So, 100 percent spot on.

Diana Eagen (23:14):

We’ve got a manufacturer here in Illinois that we work with and they do, like, smart access stuff, like garage doors and things like that. And they have major issues because their ERP didn’t even let them do any line level reporting. This is a major ERP too. So, they couldn’t look at trends. They couldn’t identify product trends. There was no tracking to see if they were meeting SLAs and when they were getting product out. Just very low visibility into inbound inquiries. I mean, these are the types of examples that are going on today in a lot of the companies that we’re working with.

Scott Luton (23:53):

I want to go back to your swivel chair theory, Diana, because what that brought to mind, for me, having worked with some incredible teams at two plants in particular, BBDS was core to my methodology, Business By Door Shadowing. Because you were talking about the swivel chair check with this department, this department. For me, it was a good knock on this office and then this office trying to track down the information that you needed. Man, if I had this back in the day, I would have tens of thousands of footsteps as we tackled some of those challenges. And so, I appreciate the supply chain therapy you’re bringing to the table here today, Diana.

Scott Luton (24:26):

Let’s get a little more specific though. You’ve already given numerous examples. Let’s talk about in particular, what AI power tools have had the most impact you’ve been seeing when it comes to complete and automated visibility over many things that you and Greg both have mentioned, you know, confirmations, ASNs, updates, delays, you name it.

Diana Eagen (24:44):

There’s certainly solutions out there that can boil the entire ocean if that’s what someone wants. If they want a full e-commerce automated ordering, auto routing of all the customer inquiries that we work with. We’ll focus just on a few at a time. Generally, maybe it’s something as simple as maybe you’re a big B and you work with a lot of small B’s. And it’s something as simple as taking the PDF that they attached in the email when they send you their order, as simple as taking those PDFs that those small B companies are sending as attachments and emails with their order. Sometimes it’s as simple as just taking those PDFs and capturing it, and validating it, et cetera, for your customer service reps. So, that’s one thing. Like you mentioned, order confirmations, when customers send in their PO, they don’t necessarily need a phone call. Just getting the email confirmation that it was processed and et cetera. So, my point is, simply, it doesn’t have to boil the ocean. It can simply be a couple key areas within that communication cycle that will enhance the process.

Scott Luton (25:53):

Diana, yes. Absolutely. I’ve heard it put, a variety of small nudges is what ultimately moves mountains. Of course, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. And, really, you’re taking bites of the elephant. And that’s what you’re describing, at least what I’m hearing. How many teams, regardless of where you are, in terms of where automation is being applied. Man, if you can solve this small little challenge, you really changed your day. And, gosh, over time, OG approach back when GE was a company most of us knew, like, in the ’70s and ’80s, incremental improvements over the time yield tremendous results. I love your perspective there, Diana. Greg, weigh in there and then we’re going to keep driving.

Greg White (26:33):

That’s the only way to do it. I mean, frankly, when you’re talking about people on the desktop who deliver the promises that are made in the boardroom, the only way to do it is to take their problem and solve it. Just that. Start with that. Because we talk about this all the time, digital transformation and implementation of technologies and all of those things, they can do great things for companies, but they first have to do great things for people. And adoption is the key. And the key to adoption is making people’s lives and jobs easier. If you have a really good strategy for implementing any kind of process change, whether it includes technology or just simply a change to the process, the best way to tackle it is to impact those most impacted by it. And to change the process that is most offensive or difficult or burdensome to them. Because you accomplished two things. One, you make the business better. And two, you win hearts and minds and that’s critical to adoption. It’s just so simple and I think you did a great job of describing that principle, Diana.

Scott Luton (27:41):

Absolutely. Diana, before we move on, anything else you want to add?

Diana Eagen (27:44):

It’s unbelievable to me that after the last few years that we’ve had, that companies- not all companies – are still sending out shipping delay notices. After everything we’ve all been through, it’s unbelievable to me that something as a small effort, like a shipping delay notice isn’t being sent out. And so, I would just say that when we’re looking at these and folks are looking at these further organization, you just look at the processes that are preventing your folks from doing their job effectively every day. It’s who’s hunting down the information, who’s customers are constantly on the phone, blowing up your emails, et cetera. And focus on those processes, for sure.

Greg White (28:29):

That’s not being missed, by the way, by those customers. Again, to go back to your first point, Diana, Amazon and Shopify and others have set the expectation that a direct to consumer mom and pop retailer, a person or company who has one product, can tell you how much they have, whether you ought to order it, and when it’s shipped, when it’s going to be arriving. All of that technology exists for people who are a mom and pop business. People expect that for these big businesses, as you said. And whether you’re hearing from them or not, they are judging you.

Greg White (29:07):

A good for instance is, 77 percent of Gen Y and Gen Z do not watch television at all. They’ve never seen broadcast news, The Today Show, Good Morning America. Well Chopped is a little different maybe because it’s cable. But they aren’t watching network television. So, do you think 77 percent of two generations sent a note to these people and said, “I’m no longer watching you”? No. They just disappeared and went somewhere else. And that’s what your customers are going to do. If you try to hide the fact that you are failing them, they still know you’re failing them. It’s just that they don’t believe that you care enough about them to tell them and to tell them when you’re going to resolve it, or that you, yourself, don’t know, which is the most frightening thing to them altogether. I’ve been watching a lot of sports shows where people argue about stuff and I think it’s time for some hard truths, right?

Scott Luton (30:05):

I’m with you. Hey, a couple quick comments. Calvin love that t-shirt-ism you shared earlier, again, empathy without action is empty. That’s a capital E. Jonathan says simply, “Gain 1 percent everyday.” I love that, Jonathan. Okay.

Scott Luton (30:22):

So, I got a two-part question. We’re kind of come around the home stretch here and we’re going to make sure we got some resources off our folks. And we’re going to make sure folks know how to connect with you, Diana. For this next question I want to just pose to you, because we’ve already kind of spoken so much of this question in terms of who benefits from effective, successful practical automation. But is there anyone we hadn’t mentioned, Diana? When you think about all the different benefits, who else?

Diana Eagen (30:48):

Well, certainly, we talked about on the supplier side, customer service, supply chain, of course all of those make sense. But I’m going to speak just personally just because I can tell you firsthand, I’m not sure anybody ever really wanted to be sold products. What they want is they want information. They need to make an informed business decision. As a buyer, Do you have the inventory? Okay. No, you don’t. But then, when are you going to have it? Buyers want transparency. So, sales teams are going to benefit. If you’re not providing that information timely and making it easy for them to find it, you’re missing out on some significant opportunities.

Diana Eagen (00:31:29):

Again, sales, customer service, those CSRs, those folks who are just so overlooked at organizations, just the thankless job for in-customer service, manually they’re digging for updates, they’re manually sending out emails to customers, they’re manually fielding all of these inbound inquiries. So, I would say when we look at automation in general through customer service, they’re going to be impacted the most, in my opinion.

Scott Luton (31:58):

And, you know, a lot of folks may not think about the sales functional area and the gains that can be had there which, of course, impacts revenue. And that will get a lot of board member’s attention, perhaps – boardroom’s attention, rather. Greg, your thoughts there on the who?

Greg White (32:12):

Of course, it’s your customer service reps. But, man, the less you can lean on them and the more definitive the answers can be and the more rapid the solutions are, I think it goes back to a point that Diana has made over and over again. And that is, that you have to serve your customers better and better to serve them first out of the gate rather than have to apologize for an error. And so much of what core technologies and AI and all of these solutions can do is help prevent you from having to have I’m sorry we screwed up customer service discussion.

Scott Luton (32:47):

I think Keith Moon would be very appreciative of how you both answered the question who. So, well done there, Diana and Greg. Let’s shift gears here. As I mentioned on the front end of today’s show, we’ve really enjoyed a variety of conversations like this with members of the Esker team. Of course, one of our favorite t-shirt-isms – Diana, you may have heard this before from Dan Reeve – is moving at the pace of a thousand gazelles, probably one of our top ten t-shirt-isms around here.

Greg White (33:13):

Are a thousand gazelles faster than one gazelle?

Scott Luton (33:16):

Greg, you’re rooting my visual.

Greg White (33:17):

Diana, I know you’re probably the one who asked him that, aren’t you?

Scott Luton (33:21):

You’re ruining my visual.

Greg White (33:23):

It’s a beautiful visual though.

Scott Luton (33:25):

Let’s make sure for the three people out there what does Esker do in a nutshell?

Diana Eagen (33:29):

Esker, basically, provides teams in customer service through supply chain with tools that fill in the gaps between their CRM, 3PL, and ERP systems. AI platform, basically, that can kind of help you balance that tightrope of cost to serve and quality service by eliminating all that busy and manual work. Generally, it’s around, again, triaging some central mailbox. It’s usually around creating and capturing transactions for orders and quotes, and managing claims, and RMAs. It’s engaging with customers with communication where’s my order. And sharing copies of invoices and those types of things automatically. Basically, with Esker, it’s kind of handing off those repetitive manual error-prone types of processes to automation technologies that kind of encourages collaboration on lots of different levels.

Scott Luton (34:33):

And a quick follow up question there, as Greg and I, one of our earliest rules through over a thousand episodes, and that doesn’t include livestreams and webinars, we don’t claim more than two decades of experience even though folks bring a lot more to the table. So, with that as a prefacing statement, Diana, this isn’t your first rodeo. You’ve been in industry, you’ve seen automation opportunities, improvement opportunities, your take here, it’s amazing what companies, big and small, with the opportunities they have to transform your employee’s experience or EX, their customers experience, everyone’s experience. There’s so many great opportunities and we’ve come so far, so fast, huh? And when you think back when you were first getting an industry and how tough it was for small beats big with regularity, right, Diana?

Diana Eagen (35:19):

It does. And, also, I think it’s important to say for some of the small businesses is that, again, AI doesn’t mean replacing humans with robots and algorithms.

Greg White (35:30):

As long as we got the opening here, let me go there. And this is where we often have this discussion around this expectation of automation or digital procedures. I like kind of the question that Sri asked there. This whole expectation around automation is that computers will or should do computer things so that humans can do human things. And a lot of what we’re talking about here are jobs that humans shouldn’t do anymore. And, frankly, the only reason that humans continued to do them was because we were protecting jobs for a generation that is now leaving the workforce at 10,000 a day. Soon, this won’t even be a discussion because there aren’t enough people in subsequent generations to replace the people, the baby boomer generation, to do the jobs that they are doing. And now it’s better if they’re done by automation than humans. It always would have been, frankly, better that they’d be done by humans for both the company and for the humans in a lot of cases, carpal tunnel syndrome, things like that, repetitive use injuries and other things like that. I think it’s important for us to acknowledge that and recognize that the world has enabled this change and that the current working generations expected.

Scott Luton (36:47):

Well said, Greg and Diana. You are just making a great demystifying statement around AI. Please continue.

Diana Eagen (36:54):

Yeah. I was just saying that we’re not going to replace the humans with robots and algorithms. We’re going to benefit, we’re going to profit from the best of both worlds. We’re going to replace all those dull tasks, the ones that are susceptible to mistakes with intelligent automation so the humans can focus on interacting with other humans again, as opposed to doing manual entry and tracking down information and those types of things. So, it’s going to let your customer service team focus on customer success as opposed to that administrative stuff that just bogs everything down.

Scott Luton (37:34):

So true. A lot of good stuff there. All right. You’ve brought some resources. The Esker team has brought this really cool resource. I’m going to bring up this graphic here. This is an ebook, Augmenting Customer Service – and get this – Providing Your Team with AI Tools That Unleash Their Superpowers. This is where the Hall of Justice and Wonder Twin Powers activate conversation pre-show came in. Diana, why should folks check this out and download it?

Diana Eagen (37:58):

It’s a great ebook and it really encapsulates what Esker does. Like I was mentioning, it’s that best of both worlds of kind of, again, filling in those gaps of your CRM, your 3PL, and your ERP. It’s going to show you some ideas of where you can automate, whether it’s triaging the central mailbox, whether it’s, again, capturing orders and quotes, or whether it’s engaging in customers with automated messaging. There’s some nice opportunities and ideas in there for those things.

Scott Luton (38:25):

Love that. Okay. Really have enjoyed your conversation and your take, and you and Greg in particular. So, let’s make sure folks, Diana, know how to connect with you and the Esker team, whether they want to invite you in, compare notes over coffee or adult beverage, or have you keynote, or something, or maybe just talk shop with you as much as we’ve enjoyed that over the last hour. So, how can folks connect with you and Esker?

Diana Eagen (38:48):

Well, if you want to connect with Esker, please by all means, just go to esker.com. That’s the fastest and quickest way because you’re going to get a direct chat to talk with somebody immediately. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, Diana Eagen on LinkedIn. I mean, that’s an easy way if you would like to talk. I will often host webinars and other discussions around order-to-cash automation, really heavy these days into all of, unfortunately, the manual tasks that are happening in customer service. I’m dealing with a lot of that stuff these days. But I’m happy to have those conversations. And, also, if you’re interested in wanting to hear about what companies in your specific vertical might be doing, we’ve got a lot of those stories as well. So, please connect with me there.

Scott Luton (39:34):

Wonderful. We’ve come so far, but we still have so far to go. Appreciate your good work there. And sign me up for the next webinar, please. I’ve really enjoyed your perspective here today. Greg, before we let Diana go, your final thought here based on what she shared.

Greg White (39:50):

I’m glad that there are advocates out there who are both challenging companies to do something big that changes, probably, the fortunes of their company and, certainly, the job satisfaction of their people, but also recognizes that it starts small with little things, incremental improvements to be able to get that off the ground. First of all, it’s rare recognition that people both have that kind of big picture view and the necessity of doing little things to get those started. So, thank you. Really, this has been somewhat therapeutic. I bet it’s been therapeutic for a lot of our listeners to kind of talk through this and to sort of expose that none of us are insane. We all probably have latently expected exactly what you’ve described here and to know that it’s out there and attainable, it is, frankly, comforting. I feel comforted.

Scott Luton (40:41):

Yes, I’m with you. Well, clearly, Diana, we really enjoyed it. We’ve got a lot of comments we couldn’t get to here today. Thanks so much for being here. And in particular, where we started a lot of this, I really appreciate, again, your passion for busting down those manual processes, making lives better for all the folks out there, employee side, customer side, no matter industry side. Diana Eagen with Esker, we hope to see you again really soon. Thanks so much.

Diana Eagen (41:05):

Thank you guys.

Scott Luton (41:06):

Man, there was something about our pre-show, of course, we know the folks Esker pretty well, but, man, I could have bolted on a couple hours whether we streamed it or put it on T.V. like M*A*S*H. But I’ve enjoyed her perspective and what she’s seen out there in the industry, huh?

Greg White (41:21):

Well, she’s really an expert. She calls herself an enthusiast, but she’s really an expert. I think we’ve been having this conversation internally. I don’t know if I’ve said this in this form yet, but this whole notion of, “So I ride motorcycles, but I am not a biker. My cousin who is a biker informed me that I am not a biker. I am a motorcycle enthusiast.” And I think today, because of influencer platforms and things like this, we are surrounded by people who are supply chain enthusiasts. And probably recently so, enthusiasts because it’s opportunistic. But there are experts out there in the field, and Diana is one of them. She has enough years of experience doing it and solving it. And she has kind of a visionary goal. I mean, she gets the irony and the tragedy of how long it has taken to get some companies to the realization that they have to do something or die. And yet she’s willing to nudge them over the line rather than shove them over the line. You know, that’s really, really important that somebody can get you there and also help you know how to get there.

Scott Luton (42:31):

Well, folks, hey, easy opportunity to connect with Diana and her team at Esker. I think we dropped the link to the ebook there in the chat. One click away from getting that. And we also dropped, let’s see here, Diana’s LinkedIn profile, so y’all check that as well. You’ll enjoy speaking with her as much as we have. So, make sure y’all check that out.

Scott Luton (42:51):

Greg, great show here today. Really have enjoyed talking with Diana. A lot of great comments came in and we couldn’t get them all. But Jonathan’s in particular, for some reason, this should be posturized everywhere, Gain 1 percent everyday. If you want to know how to move mountains, there’s some simple advice right there. Jonathan, thanks for joining us here today. Okay. Big thanks to Amanda and Katherine, Chantel, Clay, you name it. All the folks behind the scenes help make production happen. Greg, always a pleasure to knock this out with you.

Greg White (43:18):

Likewise.

Scott Luton (43:19):

A lot of good stuff here today. But folks, hey, like we always say, you’ve heard some of the most been there, done that perspective advice, know-how ideas over the last hour. But it’s up to you to take action. Deeds, not words. So, with that said, Scott Luton and the whole team here challenging you to do good, to give forward, and to be the change. And we’ll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody.

Intro/Outro (43:46):

Thanks for being a part of our Supply Chain Now community. Check out all of our programming at @supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to Supply Chain Now anywhere you listen to podcasts. And follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain Now.