Enhancing Customer Communication with AI Solutions with Andrew Ketchum – Atlassian Team ’25 NA

This is Techstrong tv. We're back at Atlassian, team 25. I'm Jon Swartz.

I'm the senior content writer at Techstrong. And with me is Andrew Ketchum, who's the incident manager at Nextiva. Hey, Andrew.

Hello. How's it going? Welcome.

And, uh, first tell us a little bit about Nextiva, what the company does and how it kind of fits into this whole AI puzzle. Yeah, absolutely. Um, Nextiva is a communications suite company.

We're trying to connect, you know, connect customers, telecommunications, chat, messaging, anything we can. Um, you know, in the AI space, we're definitely continuing to develop and offer solutions for customers with man, you know, with managing customers, chat bots, things like that. Um, but we are, you know, we're, he, we're a heavy Jira Confluence, you know, Atlassian customer.

Um, so I, you know, I'm excited to be here and learn more about, you know, what, what, what's coming outta the future and where that goes to ai. What did, what Did you learn? I mean, I understand you were at the keynote, so what did you learn about what they're doing in the, in the space?

Yeah, so there's a, there's a, you know, one of the hardest things has been taking data from one space to another space, moving it across different mediums, you know, different data platforms, different applications, um, the announcements they've made with, you know, the AI and their applications that will help connect all those things. We're excited to implement those, save us a bunch of time, uh, you know, and really speed up our process, especially around incident and problem management. Um, a lot of that is tedious work, you know, checking timelines, going back through, making sure it all, you know, links up.

AI is gonna help speed up that process and, you know, really help, help quality of life for us. So, given the, I almost wanna say AI inflation in terms of shows, yeah, I mean, I went to la we were talking earlier, I went to Las Vegas a handful of times last year. Yep.

Just for AI specific shows. Is that something that you're gonna be doing more of as not just an Atlassian customer, but as, as a company that's looking for partners or customers or, or trying to figure out what, what, what's coming down the pike in terms of ai? Yeah, absolutely.

Um, it's always good to, you know, stay ahead of, uh, you know, what's coming, see where, see where other companies are going with their ai, how they're approaching it, you know, um, data sec, ai, security, and, you know, governance. And that is, is definitely a big one. So just, just even understanding how everybody's approaching that, uh, can help, help us, help anybody really kind of, kind of get to that level of, okay, we, this is how we wanna approach ai.

This is how we feel safe about it. This is how we feel safe in our hands of users as well. So we do a lot of stories on surveys and, and now lately there've been so many about ai and one of the constant recurring themes is not only is there a land rush or a fear of missing out, but when you plunge into something like ai, the first questions of the first, uh, anxieties that appear are around security, compliance, governance.

Yeah. And I was wondering if you could maybe explain to me how Nativo kinda addresses those. I knew you did mention earlier, but maybe specifically how it addresses those concerns in terms of the use of data within co within Companies.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, the first thing is training and awareness. Um, the best thing that you can do is make sure that everybody understands what they're using, how to use it, and the information that's being provided to them.

Um, you know, a AI is really, it's still such a big and expanding space. There's new stuff being added to it all the time. So, uh, I think a key component to being successful with that in any company or for any person, is to right, understand what you're using and know, you know, know how to use it.

Um, if, you know people can put an input in, get an answer, not look at it, send that information out, that could be completely wrong, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so there still is a human element of like, right, you gotta validate it, check it, you know, use, and I think they talked about this in the keynote as well, uh, you know, the, the collaboration with human ai.

Um, so getting to that element where, you know, you know how, okay, I can use this machine, but ultimately, like I'm the controller. And so, uh, using that to, to make it safe and also make it so that the user understands how they're using it. That seemed, I mean, at Black Hat that one of the trips I did to Vegas at Black Hat, there was a, a real concern about the consequences of things may be moving too fast in ai.

Yeah. Like, it's revolutionary. Yeah.

You know, to to, to coin, to steal a word that's overused in tech, but security tends to be evolution evolutionary rather than revolutionary. So the, the, the, the on or the gap gap between, uh, bringing about an AI technology versus the security holes it might expose, or the, the surface you have to cover is always kind of a recurring theme. Is that something that you hear a lot from customer?

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, like sec, you know, security, cybersecurity, that changes daily, right?

Some, somebody else finds something else. Somebody finds a new way to exploit something, somebody finds a new way to insert data into something to change it, to do what they want. Um, and, you know, data integrity is something that I think with AI a lot of people worry about.

They worry about where is, you know, where is this getting its information from that it's giving me, how is it pulling, you know, how do I know that it's pulling the right information for me? Or how do I, you know, how do I know who can even give that data? Um, so right, like securing, securing that down, understanding, you know, understanding all that, just continuing to develop the way that it gets data and people understand it will help, uh, AI all around.

Um, One, one quick. So you do a lot of work with it Atlassian and their tools, and I'm wondering how their tools have transformed the way Nextiva operates on a daily basis. Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so, you know, in, in my space specifically the, you know, incident management and problem management, um, everything before was manual, right? Like, you had a step, you had steps, you had a task list that one person had to make sure that they could execute everything within a certain amount of time. 'cause, uh, customers need to know that there's an issue.

We need to get communications out. Um, you know, we need to let the company know that something's going on, right? The best way to, to keep everybody engaged and, you know, get to resolution the fastest is engagement and awareness.

Um, so with all, with, with the, uh, AI bots, with the automation and, and the things that Atlassian continues to, you know, provide and develop, um, we can cut that, cut that time down to like seconds rather than minutes. Um, and, you know, and, and incident management and the customer resolution, right? Every minute counts to them.

They're like, uh, you know, every minute they can't do something is business lost to them. And that's, you know, that multiplies by how many customers, right? And you gotta think about it, like each incident has a cost.

Uh, so, so really the way that we look at it is anything that we can do faster, um, engaging everybody quickly, that saves us money, that saves them money, uh, and ultimately helps, you know, instill that confidence in the customer with us. Do you have internal training at your company? I, the reason I'm asking you that is 'cause Cisco systems, uh, their global innovation officer, I was talking to him a couple days ago and he mentioned that they're gonna have mandatory testing and upskilling within their organization.

And I'm wondering if that's something that you do already or something that you would consider doing? Yeah, we Ab we absolutely do. Um, especially with, you know, when it comes to security, uh, and earn just data integrity.

Um, any, anything that, you know, really that we know that people need to learn about, people need to know about. We have mandatory training gets sent out constantly. Um, we've seen that help, we've seen great success with that, with, you know, help reducing security incidents, um, reducing security issues.

And also with people just, you know, understanding how to handle a security or incident event. Is there, is there always like this kind of lingering fear among companies that, that if they, if they adopt AI too quickly or they don't have the proper security in place, that there's gonna be some sort of, uh, digital, you know, they used to say digital per Pearl Harbor, but I'm thinking it's something like an incident that they have to report. Is there like this fear that something like that might happen on a wide scale eventually?

I, it's inevitable, I think, right? Yeah. I mean, I think you always have to be prepared for, you know, that's, that's a part of instant management, part of problem management, right?

You're always preparing for like, what could our worst case scenario be? But we don't actively act every day like that's going to happen, right? Because I think the, you know, that's, nobody wants that to happen.

That's worst case scenario for everybody, right? So, you know, we, we trust that the innovations and where things are going, um, are going in the right direction. And, you know, we, we continue, especially with ai, we want to implement it and use it as much as, as much as we can.

'cause we see, you know, we know that's the future, right. What, how, how are you implementing AI across your organization and how has it changed or, um, evolved, say in the last year? Is it constantly changing?

I'm, what I'm trying to grasp is, uh, when we hear so many stories and hear about AI agents being used across enterprises, it, there's like this, this uncertainty of how it's gonna be used and where it will start. And it's been kind of slower a adoption than we had. Some had anticipated, especially, I've been hearing this through, uh, consultants who work for places like Salesforce.

I'm wondering how you've used within your company AI and how it's evolved in its use and what you're doing now that you didn't do six months ago. Yeah, So I think, um, right before, beforehand, I think a lot of the AI use was individual people were using it. Like, how can I, you know, how can I enhance what I'm doing with ai?

Um, those are all like individual cases where you're, you have a need. You're going to the, you know, you're, you're using AI to fix that need. Um, we are seeing, you know, more implementation and starting to use, like find places for AI where we know that that's already happening.

So we have AI there to do that action, handle that thing, um, be able to respond, be able to hand, you know, this is, it knows that this needs to be the next action after X, Y, Z. Um, all those things that we have identified as we know these situations keep happening, let's save us the time. You know, let's help us, let's save us the work.

Uh, let's, you know, let's use AI to, right, right. That, that, that continued method of using that human and AI interaction to get the best, you know, best success. Um, finding places like that, uh, is definitely how we've, how we've improved over the past six months.

And, and since we're at an Atlassian event, which of their products do you rely on the most? Uh, So, um, in my area specifically, we're definitely relying Jira service management. That's the core of everything.

Um, that's how we know who to engage. That's how we know who fixes who, you know, who to fix for the right service. Um, you know, everything comes outta there.

Uh, so for us, uh, and you know, and even with this, even within the past week, we see updates coming from, you know, Atlassian four JSM all the time. Okay. All, you know, all looking toward ai.

Like how do we, again, how do we help the human do these tasks in an easier, easier way? Um, I really appreciate that. I haven't seen, like, it doesn't seem like they're trying to automate anybody out of a job, right?

I think that's everybody's, that's always, That's a big fear, right? That's Always a big fear, right? Um, that it, it really is.

All of these things are in place to help and enhance the, you know, the worker or the user make you a more efficient employee, whatever you need to do, um, instead of Right. Like taking away your ability to do it. Okay.

So we've gone through all, I have to ask a really important question now, drew. Yes. So I understand that you were a contestant on the floor, which is a very popular game show on Fox.

Yes. Can you tell us the category that you specialized in and how well you did on the show? Um, so my category was ancient Egypt.

Um, yeah, I have a pretty extensive knowledge of fascinated me when I was younger. Uh, and I got, and I really got into it. Uh, I knew that it was a category that I could defend, uh, till the end, but unfortunately, I got randomly selected somewhere through, uh, challenged somebody to a dual, uh, challenge them to their category in action movies.

Did not know that they had a podcast on movies. Wow. So, I, I I the ringer basically, yeah, I was, I did.

Okay. Um, but I think it was with like, it was six or eight seconds left. I got stuck on one question and that pretty much that lost it for me, so.

Wow. Wow. Well, that's cool though, that out.

Yeah. But I, I made it, you know, I made it to episode five, so that was, that was exciting. That's, That's, that's very impressive, man.

Hey, thanks Andrea. It's great. Great meeting you.

Absolutely. Um, thank you for sharing your knowledge on Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on security, telecom, ai, and game show playing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's it.

Uh, we'll be back later with more interviews from, uh, the Atlassian show in Anaheim.