The CEO Interview: Sagi Eliyahu at KMS Lighthouse

Sagi Eliyahu introduces us to KMS Lighthouse, before sharing some key advice for improving knowledge management and empowering contact centre teams.

Tell Us About Your History With the Company

I’ve been with KMS Lighthouse for four and a half years, coming from a background in initiating and successfully establishing global operations in several markets.

With this experience, I brought a vision for replicating the success that KMS Lighthouse have enjoyed in the local market, in our case Israel, on the international stage.

The company is growing rapidly, as more companies develop clever knowledge strategies to improve customer and employee experiences.

While our innovation centre is still very much in Israel, the company is growing rapidly, as more companies develop clever knowledge strategies to improve customer and employee experiences.

In fact, we are rapidly expanding into North America, Europe and Asia.

Our success is exciting and every day I’m enjoying working with our great team.

What Do You Attribute Your Success To?

Firstly, in recent years, we shifted our solutions to the cloud, to help speed up deployment, enable quick integrations and ensure our innovations work effectively in the remote environment.

Secondly, it’s the quality of the technology itself. Every company has some form of knowledge management, but our solutions help to take this to a whole new level through:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) that automates long, monotonous processes.
• Greater simplicity through natural language understanding (NLU) to help agents and customers easily find what they are looking for (like Google!).

This last point is so key, as agents do not need to be trained to use the system. It is easy and very powerful in providing customers and agents with the right information at the right time.

Focusing on these two areas – to offer our clients with the best possible knowledge solution for them – has been key, as has the hard work and determination of our team.

How Has the Contact Centre Industry Changed Since You Joined KMS Lighthouse?

The need to switch to remote working has no doubt been the biggest trend. Yet this has caused a number of other shifts across the industry.

An agent can no longer put their hand up and receive immediate support from the team leader or a colleague.

One particularly interesting example, which has impacted us, is the need to support agents in new ways. After all, an agent can no longer put their hand up and receive immediate support from the team leader or a colleague.

Many contact centres are therefore looking into how they can empower their teams with timely, high-quality information, through solutions like a knowledge base.

What Do You Predict Will Be the Biggest Change That Will Happen in the Industry in the Next Five Years?

Contact centres will look to automate lots of manual processes, and the AI technologies that enable them to do just that will keep on improving.

However, with this automation, as well as improved website capabilities and the increase in customer self-service, the agent’s job will become more challenging. Contacts will become more complex.

Agents will need to be prepared to handle complex call after complex call, which are impossible to script.

What Do Your Customers Tell You Are Their Greatest Challenges?

We are helping lots of contact centres fix broken processes, which is a big challenge for many, and supporting them in their digital transformation efforts.

Organizations look to us to ensure agents are providing consistent customer service, across all channels, and also to help develop a knowledge strategy that breaks down business silos.

In doing so, the contact centre can share great knowledge across the entire organization, enabling every department to access important customer insights.

Finally, there is the all-too-familiar problem of employee retention. Attrition rates can be very high within contact centres and many will turn to us to speed up the onboarding process with our knowledge solutions.

What Product Developments Will Your Company Be Making Over the Next Five Years?

We are creating lots of innovations to simplify knowledge management processes.

A lot of work goes into breaking down big manuals and training documents into simple knowledge articles. We want to automate this process for contact centres and customers who use the knowledge base.

Then, we want to look at proactively feeding information to agents in real time, so the knowledge base understands the customer conversation and sends the agent a notification with information that is relevant to the conversation.

Such a tool has powerful potential in assisting agents with complex call reasons.

What Is Your Proudest Achievement at Your Company?

Building a solution that is globally considered to be a leading contact centre technology is one of two achievements that we are very proud of.

We have worked hard to create a solution and a clear business model that differentiates us from all of the other technology vendors out there.

Customers bring in other customers and that has been a key part of our growth.

This model is focused on improving employee and customer experience and has enabled us to be a disruptive force within the industry.

The second achievement is hearing our customers speak on our behalf. This is a big achievement, as customers bring in other customers and that has been a key part of our growth.

What Is the Most Gratifying Part of Your Job?

Working with, engaging with and talking to our team.

At KMS Lighthouse, we are very much focused on helping one another, engaging with clients and enjoying their journey.

Our success has come with a lot of hard work. There is no magic formula. But by working together and delivering on our commitments, we have created a winning culture.

What Has Been the Best Company / Contact Centre That You Have Recently Visited?

Given the current climate of the world today, Assuta Healthcare really stands out.

We work with lots of great companies, who are innovative in lots of different ways, but, given the current climate of the world today, Assuta Healthcare really stands out.

As one of Israel’s largest healthcare organizations, Assuta Healthcare played a key role within the country’s COVID-19 vaccination response. This was in addition to their usual workload, which includes handling complex surgeries.

It was great to see how they utilized our technologies, in a really tough situation, to develop a knowledge strategy that proved very successful within a remote contact centre environment.

If There Was One Piece of Advice That You Could Offer Our Readers, What Would It Be?

Many contact centres are hesitant to move with the times. Some processes will likely have been in place for years and years, but they are not questioned, which can damage the employee and customer experience.

Don’t be afraid! Be brave, take on big projects and change things.

Speak to other contact centres, network and learn from each other. Your journey to achieving big improvement goals will likely be much quicker than you imagined beforehand.

A key topic of this article was knowledge management. For more on this important subject, read our articles:

• An Introduction to Call Centre Knowledge Base Software
• 11 Ideas to Improve Knowledge Management in the Contact Centre
• 10 Knowledge Management Mistakes That You May Be Making (and 5 Fixes)