The Human Edge, Amplified with Tulsi Keshkamat, Microsoft Teams

0:00Ron Thurston:Welcome back to a special episode of Retail in America, sponsored by Microsoft. This season, I've been digging into what I think is the most important question facing retail right now. And that is, as AI shows up everywhere, what makes the human work on the floor more valuable, not less? My guest today is Tulsi Keshkamat. She leads the product team behind Frontline Worker Tools at Microsoft Teams. Before that, she built across some of Microsoft's deepest platforms, like Windows, Xbox, and the Power Platform, which means she thinks full system, from backend infrastructure to the experience an associate sees on their phone.

0:44Ron Thurston:And she'll tell you that everything she's built has started in the same place, being deeply curious about people. And here's the thing I want to dig into with her, that most retail leaders I talk to don't realize that Microsoft has quietly built what may be the largest frontline workforce platform on the planet. Tens of millions of associates across grocery, big box, fast fashion, telecommunications, retail, luxury brands, and more. a platform their headquarters can finally talk to and that workers can finally talk back through. And what Tulsi's team has done on top of that with bringing AI into the workflow in ways most people don't realize is already there.

1:30Ron Thurston:And that's where this conversation gets really interesting. So let's get into it. Tulsi, welcome to Retail in America. I am very excited to have you on the show today. Likewise, Ron. I'm excited to be here. Thank you. So I had mentioned in the introduction here that your team is really bringing AI into the workflow in ways that maybe many people and brands don't really recognize. So I wanted to start with the big question of the day, which is this awareness gap. So as you're building something that most retailers already have existing, why is the awareness gap so big when it comes to how they can use Microsoft Teams?

2:16That is a million-dollar question, Ron. As it turns out, Microsoft has done a phenomenal job marketing the information worker side of what we do. And that's our strength, but that's in some cases also overshadowing some of the other great work that we do. Teams started to be seen as an information worker specific meetings and communication slash collaboration platform. But it is so much more. It is not only for information workers. And that's what has caused this awareness gap. And that's what we have to actually make sure our customers understand and see. When they actually see the product, I often see the light bulb go on.

3:05I see their eyes pop and, oh, this is what I've been looking for. When are you releasing this? And then sometimes we have to tell them that, no, we have already released this. and a lot of customers are using it. And it's very likely that you might also have the license already.

3:22Ron Thurston:Was there a moment when you recognized that this is a massive opportunity specifically for frontline work? Yes, absolutely. Ron, our mission at Microsoft has always been to help organizations and people achieve more. A lot of that focus was on information worker. I personally worked in business applications and from our work in business applications, we had a very clear recognition that many of our big customers actually have a pretty large mix of information workers and frontline workers. Anywhere those ratios vary from one to one is to three to one is to ten. And we could see that the actual product work was happening in the frontline.

4:12The actual operations were happening there. The customer service was happening there. So there was very clearly that gravity and that need. There was this big need for communication and collaboration. But it was during the pandemic that we started seeing that that recognition was truly happening even in the market. our own customers started to see that they have the need to reach out to their frontline workers to be able to send urgent communications and we latched on to that so it was around the pandemic that we said all right there is a real thing here we have the assets and we do need to do specific work because frontline workers do have different needs from information workers but we are on to something here so we created the frontline licensing skew and we started to see traction

5:05Ron Thurston:amazing well and and you're right because it may be tools that already exist it's it's the brand is already part of it and the frontline you know it's a big conversation for this show the frontline is often the the last kind of recipient of investment or new ideas and and we're not just talking about retail, all kind of areas of frontline often are doing the work and they're scrappy and they're trying to figure out how to get it done. And when there are very high level, well-developed, important tools that exist, it's just so welcome. I think that's the best part of that frontline. They're hungry for it.

5:47Ron Thurston:They want more insight. They want to streamline their work. They have a very limited and busy time. And time and resources are always valuable. And so things like this, I think, are an important moment where we're really here to support you. We're really here to give you what you need. I could not agree more, Ron. Frontline is such a tech-hungry demographic. They have been underserved traditionally by technology. and yet the opportunity to be served and the opportunity for the ROI that tech can provide them is tremendous. And when they start recognizing that, when digital transformation in the frontline actually happens, you can see the numbers move because it directly translates into the hourly savings that are happening.

6:38Hey, this used to take much longer before. It now takes a shorter time. Yeah, exactly. I used to have to find people to communicate with in the past. Now I can actually reach them with voice or with my fingertips. It's great.

6:53Ron Thurston:And we'll move on. But it's interesting because when I have conversations with technology founders and we start to talk about AI, which you and I will hear in a moment, their response is we can understand the return on an AI investment when it's specifically for the frontline faster than anywhere else. Because you're right, that tech hungry, they're willing to adopt, they're willing to use, and you can see the ROI even faster. Would you agree with that? I would 100 % agree with that. In my observation, the frontline area is ripe with business workflows. Just the operations, there's a lot of repeatability in what they have to do.

7:36On a daily basis, they have to do a certain set of things. So anything that you can do to speed up, that has compounding value. and then when you can chain things together you can you can go from one workflow to another it actually shrinks the time that is needed to perform those workflows it makes information available at the right time at the right place for the right person all of that then directly

8:03Ron Thurston:contributes to the roi calculation yeah fantastic so i want to go into to some of the the basics. So if I am a brand new first day enroll frontline associate, the company has frontline licenses, what does that look like for me as I'm using these tools? With Teams for Frontline, Ron, the way that we approach digital transformation is by giving each frontline worker a digital identity. This digital identity allows them to participate in communication, collaboration. They are able to hear from their leaders. They are able to perform the operational workflows, be on schedule, know what tasks need to be performed, all of that, right?

8:51But what does day one look like? You're very aware that there is a real seasonality. There can be churn. There There is a lot of turnover in the frontline workforce. And in that world, the amount of time that is spent on training and onboarding someone, that can become a real train. So for a lot of organizations, the faster they can put that frontline worker on the floor with confidence, because this is the person that's representing your company to your end customer who you really care about. so that confidence is critical that preparedness is critical now do you want to spend three to five days training them just so that they can be on their first shift or do they need to constantly find a frontline manager or a store manager that they can shadow yes all of those are approaches but the faster we can get them ready and we can get give them the tooling so that the help that they need is available at the moment of the customer interaction.

9:58For instance, someone walks up to them and says, hey, can I return this? I am on day X since I purchased this and I've opened it or I don't have the label for this. Is it still okay to return? You don't want that frontline worker to struggle. That store associate should be able to find answers and find definitive answers. So in that situation, something like AI, some kind of question and answer assistant that is actually grounded in the real information from the store. So it's going to be correct. And they don't have to memorize it because they have access to it right away. They don't have to get flustered and go looking for someone else to help them, which again causes delays for the customer as well because they are left waiting there.

10:42So all of these things. So that's one thing that we aim to solve for with the frontline agent that we have created. Another important thing is just the predictability. When you have a standardized chat channel, the channel structure in Teams, it's very clear where you should go to look for what information. where are your colleagues going to be if you do need to reach someone you're on one end of the warehouse the your colleague might be on a different side can you quickly access them there might be existing information that you just have to find so when it is structured when then it is predictable then it is easy to find and the same thing that happens when a frontline line worker, a store associate, goes to a new different store location, which also happens.

11:33A lot of times they work across many different locations in the same, say, district. And even in that case, that predictability is super, super helpful.

11:45Ron Thurston:I absolutely agree. Well, and statistically, part of the turnover challenge that we have at Frontline, and which includes hospitality is usually in the top five lack of resources or understanding about how to do my job well it's it's it's very frustrating the customer's frustrated they don't know who trying to find a manager like this we've all seen the scenarios and if you can solve one of the most important challenges which is i have the tools and resources to be competent competent in my role within a matter of days or hours. It's a phenomenal way to think about not only reducing turnover, but employee customer experiences and loyalty and, you know, the spinoff of what a great, confident frontline employee can do is unstoppable, in my opinion.

12:42Yes. And our aim is to replace that frustration with low cognitive overload, just being able to be calm, being able to know where to go to find the things that they need without having to struggle. And that is the entire philosophy that we have built our solution on.

13:02Ron Thurston:Yeah, incredible. So let's go through kind of the scale because you have a very wide range of customers. And some of them, they run the gamut from organizations with more than a million frontline workers down to brands that have 20 or 30 ,000. So we talk about grocery and big box and fast fashion and telecommunications and luxury. There's, you really touch every part of the industry. So is, is the difference, are there more differences than not? Are there more similarities than not? So how do you, brands that are listening, how do you identify who's the right customer for the frontline tools? I would say you're 100 % right.

13:50we do see a huge range in that spectrum is just really large and there are a lot of commonalities and there are a few differences as well so let me expand on that a little bit when you're thinking about big box large grocery chains million plus store associates and so on the core problem that they're dealing with on on the floor on a day-to-day basis really centers around inventory management. Inventory management, labor management, these tend to be the top of mind things that they are thinking about. So constantly what they are doing is tracking if there is any inventory that is running low, that needs to be stocked again, that needs to be ordered, etc.

14:38Are there tasks around that? When is the truck arriving? When does it need to be unloaded? All of that. And then are Are there going to be enough people? At what time do we need enough people? That's the set of things that they are thinking about. When you move a little bit towards luxury retail, the thing that comes more to the forefront is the associate customer relationship. There is a much more personalized aspect to it that has premium value. That's the primary asset. and that customer interaction becomes the primary asset. In that world, being able to personalize the customer's experience, for instance, let's say that there is an existing relationship that a customer has with a personal shopper in a luxury retail store.

15:33Being able to connect the information on whether this person is going to be on shift when the customer wants to come in for a 2 p.m. appointment? And can you provide that continuity in relationship because the customer prefers it? Having access to that schedule management information, tying it to the CRM data that exists, we actually see some customers do this today. The second big one I'll call out is there is a need for a much faster loop between corporate and the actual retail store locations in luxury goods because they have to have a lot of they have to have fast loops on what is the new label that is coming out what is the new seasonal line that is coming out what is the positioning what is the theme all of these things need to be communicated so every employee there can represent it this is all premium brand right In that case, that corporate connection, the engaged solution that we have, which is the social field like experience, which sits within teams that allows corporate to send out these communications that are guaranteed to reach your frontline, that can be acknowledged, that can be tracked, that are well understood.

16:53All of these things, that loop becomes super important. So you can say that communication and collaboration is critical and important in both. So the basic product capabilities are very similar or that core thread runs through the entire spectrum. However, what it is used for and what is the data that it connects to on the other side, that might vary. And we have to make sure that we are addressing that entire spectrum.

17:24Ron Thurston:And because you're exactly right. I think of the kind of big box, very highly operational, highly of the efficiency versus the emotional connections. But the tools don't have to be dramatically different. It's how you use them and how you use them. That's the right way for you for your business. And the hardware in stores is also quite different. Yes. You have brands with walkies. You have brands that are only on shared device. So you have brands with, you know, kind of bring your own device. You have brands that provide devices to everyone. So you also have to think, how will they receive it?

18:04Ron Thurston:Maybe it's a shared desk computer in some cases. Something like that. How they use it, where they find it, the efficiency of getting the work done is all adds to complexity. But sounds like you've covered all of that. Yes, and I'm so glad you call out the device aspect of it as well, because it's the device, it's the headset. We see in large retail stores, the big box retail that we talk about, we see a lot of shared device usage. and we enable that. And because these store associates might be on the go all the time, the ability to quickly sign in to the device and log into the Teams app where all your other applications and information is already available.

18:49So you're not sitting there logging into multiple different apps or when every time you come back from your break and you have to pick up a new shared device, you're not going through that whole set of steps again. That's important. Whereas in luxury retail, it is much more likely that they have a personal device, either their own device or a company issued personal device and higher end hardware as well. So we make sure that we work across these devices, even headsets, earphones, all of these things need to be taken care of.

19:26Ron Thurston:Which kind of leads me to my next question just around workforce management. So most brands are on, you know, kind of Workday or Kronos or they have some other platform that they're using for their teams. Where does Microsoft's frontline tool, where does it play into that and support them? So, Ron, there is a very specific reason we call teams a platform. Teams for Frontline is a platform product because the job of a platform product is to be that unifying hub that sits atop integrations with other systems. The workforce management system is one example where the system of record for your scheduling data is the workforce management system.

20:17And it doesn't help the customer. It doesn't help us if we go in with a proposition of, hey, the first thing you do is migrate everything over from the system that you have been reliably using for the last 20 years.

20:30Ron Thurston:Exactly. That's not a great starting point. And that is not the value prop that we are offering either. So our value prop is really in the system of engagement. We are saying that, hey, your data, your inventory data can live wherever in whatever system you're using today. Your workforce management data can live wherever it sits today. It might be connecting to your payroll data. Often that is how it works. So we give you the surface where this information can be pulled in. The scheduling data can be pulled in. But it is very easy for you to offer shifts to your frontline workers, allow them to do shift swaps, allow your frontline managers, your schedulers to make tweaks or even create an entirely new shift.

21:19And we provide robust APIs. We provide bidirectional sync. We allow for all of that information to flow back in into the workforce management system so that your payroll system still kicks in just as needed. you can sign into your shift from your device in Teams. So you don't again have to go to multiple other surfaces to do that. Once you are on your shift, there is a lot of need around communication and collaboration. That is what we take care of. There is a lot of work that needs to be handled. Let's assume, Ron, that you have shown up to your shift. You've clocked in. You're doing your job, unfortunately, you find that you're not feeling well and you need to head home.

22:05Now, in this scenario, there is a lot of last minute coordination, communication. You have to let the store manager know. The store manager needs to find who else is available. Do I already have enough people on the floor that can handle the load? Do I need to call in someone else, offer half a day shift all that happens in teams okay which in the past is highly manual and yes

22:31Ron Thurston:time consuming and again you think about time and resources everything you're describing gives the leadership team back some time in order to focus on other on other areas yeah so i've actually gone and looked at there are store chains where home gardening type store chain and I was talking to the store manager hey what do you do if someone ends up not showing up for a shift or they end up having to leave halfway they the person showed me his contact list oh I have to go through my roster of connections and then I have to call them one by one and I have to see hey are you available Bob can you show up today at in another hour etc so it's highly manual which having a better process to do that really gives that person time back to be on the floor and manage the shift Yes, agreed.

23:35Ron Thurston:Which also takes me into my next question around just voice and the idea of the future of how voice is being used in things like store visits. You shared a story that I'd like for you to tell around, like, what does a daily walkthrough look like using just voice? because it is becoming a bigger conversation, eyeglass idea. I've heard today even just like the AirPods that I'm in, Apple's developing the ability to have a camera. Like there's just, we're in a constant state of now speaking rather than typing. And so how does that work on frontline teams? Yeah, spot on, Ron. that point on voice and frontline extremely relevant because in the frontline world it actually is even pointier I would say the need if you have to take your gloves off every time to type a message or to write something that is a very different experience and that's that's that is one of the things that adds to that frustration it's a cumbersome way of doing something that you have to do that is one of your actual tasks that you need to complete on a daily basis so let's take the example of that store walkthrough site walkthrough etc and the how voice helps that and how what we have done about it in the past what i used to hear was store managers every day had to do their rounds and these rounds can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and then there is a big task of following up after the round with documenting what they saw with taking actions to assign tasks to someone to ask someone to do something that this they felt was not up to the mark etc they would go around with paper and pen they would have this writing pad with a pen and they would keep noting things and then they would also have a checklist many times where they would I have to mark items, check for this, check for this other thing.

25:46Yes, no, etc. Right. So 30 minutes to an hour in the actual walkthrough and then another hour almost doing follow ups, documenting, because you also have to maintain an audit trail and so on. Now, all of this, just imagine the world where with a voice based checklist, all this manager now has to do is start the walkthrough. and just with voice they know what items are there in the checklist they just call out what the status of each of those items is if there is something new that they see they can take a voice note with a follow-up saying hey i this inventory needs to be updated or this shelf needs to be stopped or i see dirt here that needs to be cleaned up etc and that's it when the walkthrough ends there is no going back to their desk there is no documenting and doing a separate set of follow-ups to take action on the walkthrough that just happened and the record exists because now that checklist is there it does a phenomenal job of actually capturing what the person said taking the notes and the follow-ups as well so that whole loop now you've shrunk it big time but it is a delightful experience.

27:05It is that you've taken the drudgery out of the task that they have to do and they can be fully focused. The other thing that we don't often realize is in this world where they need to be heads up hands free, having to type or having to write actually is neither heads up nor hands free. So if you can give them that, voice allows them to to be that voice allows them to their eyes can actually be looking around and they are fully present on the floor there are many implications to that there are safety implications there are judgment implications there are cognitive burden implications but this is the thing that starts to now chip away at the cognitive burden starts to chip away at the frustration that these people regularly encounter.

27:56And instead, that job becomes less mechanical and more interesting.

28:03Ron Thurston:Much more interesting. And as you're describing that, Tulsi, the idea, and I know this is specifically a retail frontline conversation, but I think about hospitality, I think about healthcare, I think about these other massive markets that you serve, where voice and all of I've been to doctors who are taking notes by hand. We've all been in restaurants where you can tell the workload is very high. What you're describing, I'm just imagining, yes, in retail, but I'm also thinking about it in other industries. Yes, so you're 100 % right on that in hospitality, room readiness checks. That's a checklist done by voice.

28:46where in a hospital clinical location, discharge checklist, triage checklist, ward readiness checklist, all of these are checklists. And so, and voice is completely applicable in all of those scenarios as well. So, yes, this is true. I'll tell you that we are actually currently previewing the functionality that I just talked about, the voice-based checklist functionality with a number of select customers across some of these different industries.

29:20Ron Thurston:Amazing. Well, I can't wait to hear more about that in the future, for sure, but thank you. Yes, I'm excited about it too. Me too. So I want to move into our last couple of questions here just around one announcement that I know you wanted to make sure we spoke about, about Meta Workplace shutting down the end of last year. and how that maybe customer migration, the tools that are available, people that were in that group, how have you picked up and been able to serve that customer? Last year, Ron, when Meta Workplace announced End of Life, one of the things that happened is we learned important things from the customers that we were talking about.