[Data Geeks Podcast]: Data, Data and More Data – Better Support Through Connected Technologies

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Welcome back to our podcast series, A Conversation with Two Data Geeks. In this third, and final, installment we look ahead to what’s next for Dell EMC support’s big data ecosystem of intelligent technologies.

Proactive and Predictive Support

Today, we use machine learning models to provide predictive recommendations to our customers. We can, for example, predict a PC hard drive or solid state drive will fail based on big data analysis before it exhibits a physical failure. The impact of this is significant as the customer is alerted and has time to save critical data and photos of loved ones and furry friends before the drive goes down.

This is a fundamental shift in the traditional support model. We aren’t waiting for customers to call, chat or tweet us about an issue. We’re enabling them with technology that will recognize and predict issues as well as proactively contact Dell EMC to begin resolution. The burden is no longer on customers to discover a problem and notify us. That means one less thing added to their to-do list and more time for the things that are truly important to running their businesses and lives.

SupportAssist predicts a hard drive failure and alerts a customer before the failure occurs.

Staying Connected

Connectivity is the key ingredient in this new kind of support. We can’t provide automated, proactive and predictive support and understand how systems are behaving without staying connected to those systems, via our SupportAssist and Secure Remote Services technologies. This is how we get the timeliest information and how we train our models to provide the most value back to customers.

What’s Next

Now that we have been on our transformation journey for several years, we are looking to make the support experience we provide even better. Better how? By increasing time to insight so our customers get the information they need when they need it – in order to resolve issues faster or mitigate them before they happen.

We also plan to continue to contextualize data in order to build out customer blueprints or DNA, expanding our understanding of customers and their journey before and after product purchase. The goal is for our technologies to deliver more accurate, granular and customer-specific recommendations so the value they provide is even greater.

In addition to what we’re doing with machine learning, we are beginning to explore the power of deep learning by transforming data into images to learn about it in ways we have never done before. This is a major focus for our data geek Michael Shepherd and lead Data Scientist Landon Chambers over the next year. More to come on that in the future…

To learn more about the use of data science to truly understand customer DNA, check out Dell EMC Global Services President Doug Schmitt’s blog, Decoding Customer DNA with Data Science.

A Conversation with Two Data Geeks | Part 3 of 3: Data, Data and More Data – Better Support through Connected Technologies

Are you a data geek?

So are the big data gurus behind SupportAssist and MyService360. Find out when our experts realized they were total data geeks and how the concepts of machine learning, deep learning, predictive modeling and data contextualization apply to our support transformation. Read more about the subject in Bill Schmarzo’s “Becoming Netflix Intelligence: Something Every Company Can Do!

Thanks for listening.

I look forward to staying connected and sharing what our data geeks are up to in the future. In the meantime, let’s continue the conversation right here. Tell us the moment you realized you were a total data geek. (Hint: If you followed along throughout this series and are excited to hear what comes next, you may be a data geek.)


Meet our data geeks in Vegas, April 30 – May 3!

Want to learn more about predictive customer intelligence? Come meet our data geeks in person at Dell Technologies World, and hear how they use data science and Dell EMC technologies to predict personalized outcomes and recommend preventative actions for our customers. Join their “Predictive customer intelligence: Using data science to transform the customer service experience” presentation.


In case you missed it:

Did you miss part 1 or part 2 of this podcast series? I invite you to listen now.


Speakers:

Rex Martin, Ph.D. | Director, Advanced Proactive Services

Dr. Martin holds 8 U.S. patents in cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI). His current focus is leveraging Deep Learning methods to enable a competitively differentiated customer service experience. In 2016, his team won the Technology Services Industry Association award for Innovation in the Transformation of Support Services for MyService360. He has also received Presidential awards for innovation from EMC, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.


Michael Shepherd | AI Research Technologist

Michael holds U.S. patents in both hardware and software and is a Technical Evangelist who provides vision through transformational AI data science. With experience in supply chain, manufacturing and services, he enjoys demonstrating real scenarios with the SupportAssist Intelligence Engine showing how predictive and proactive AI platforms running at the “speed of thought” are feasible in every industry.

About the Author: Kevin Whitlow

With more than 20-years of operations and technology services delivery experience, Kevin Whitlow serves as Senior Vice President of Dell EMC Support and Deployment Services Product & Engineering Group. Kevin’s organization is responsible for the design, development and marketing of Dell EMC services programs and related customer tools. He also directs the group’s channel partner strategy and manages the Services Engineering Group which is responsible for product and services readiness, serviceability engineering, and operational governance and efficiency. Kevin previously led Dell’s Americas Commercial Support Services and Global Technical Account Management team which provides support and account management services to business customers in Canada, the United States, and Latin America. He also had global responsibility for operationalizing acquisitions. Prior to this, Kevin held senior management positions in Dell’s Field Services and Logistics organizations. Kevin joined Dell in 1999 from PepsiCo Food Service where he served in a number of leadership positions including Vice President of Operations. Kevin earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Louisville.
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