Ep 8 | Knowledge-First Support Ecosystem | Pivot Point with Alok Ramsisaria & Suresh Ramaswamy

Can knowledge become the operating backbone of your support organization? In this follow-up episode of ‪@ThePivotPointPodcasts‬, host Alok Ramsisaria welcomes back Suresh Ramaswami, Group Vice President of Global Customer Support at Cornerstone On-Demand ‪@csodsocial‬ to continue the conversation on the future of AI-powered customer support. In their previous discussion, they explored how knowledge must evolve from static content into a trusted system built for both humans and AI. This time, they take that idea one step further by asking: What happens when knowledge becomes the intelligence layer that powers the entire support organization? What You'll Learn: • Why trusted knowledge should become the operating foundation of modern support • How AI is reshaping traditional L1, L2, and L3 support structures • The role of customer context and product telemetry in proactive issue resolution • Why support professionals will evolve from problem solvers to strategic advisors • How every support interaction creates new knowledge for future AI and human resolutions • What a knowledge-first, AI-native support organization looks like • Practical steps support leaders can take to prepare for the next generation of customer support Key Takeaway: The future of customer support isn't about replacing people with AI. It's about creating an intelligent ecosystem where trusted knowledge, AI, customer context, and human expertise work together to deliver faster resolutions, better customer experiences, and continuous organizational learning. ⏱ Chapters: 00:00 Why AI forces a rethink of how support is organised 01:01 Meet Suresh Ramaswami and a recap on knowledge as a product 02:01 Knowledge as the operating foundation, not documentation 02:40 The knowledge management problems that no longer pass 03:34 Fifty years of software: why coding shrank and relationships grew 05:18 How support got forgotten while sellers and coders took the spotlight 06:28 Trust, and the humans who actually build it 07:25 Can knowledge-first make support customer-first again? 08:33 Why the L1, L2, L3 model breaks down 09:00 The new competencies support teams will need 10:49 From queue-based workflows to knowledge-driven resolution 11:17 Where the human fits: judgment, empathy and prediction 12:37 When search cut case volume but raised time per case 13:41 Service and information requests clogging the queue 14:54 Should support teams own adoption and customer value? 16:13 Phase one: leveraging the context already in your data 19:02 If AI can resolve it, it should never enter the queue 19:26 Partnering with cloud ops, product and engineering 20:57 Making customer impact visible to backend teams 22:15 Transparency, accountability and customer trust 22:56 Phase two: partnering with customer success on adoption 24:38 Real-time customer data for every stakeholder 26:25 Deflecting the ticket before it is ever raised 27:46 How would you structure a support org from scratch? 28:52 New products: building telemetry and knowledge from day one 30:35 Mature products: keep the easy cases out of the queue 31:28 Customers still want human confirmation 32:24 Organising teams by case age instead of tier 34:04 Triage by day five and swarm the specialists 34:56 A dedicated knowledge custodian team inside support 36:38 Supportability: fixing why the cases arrive at all 38:40 Recap: the three teams a modern support org needs 40:34 Using AI to create knowledge for new products 42:48 Suresh's closing summary 44:45 Sign-off 🎙️ Guest: Suresh Ramaswami, Former Group Vice President, Global Customer Support, Cornerstone OnDemand 🎙️ Host: Alok Ramsisaria, CEO, Grazitti Interactive Who This Is For: Customer support leaders, customer success professionals, knowledge management practitioners, CX executives, AI leaders, product teams, and anyone designing the next generation of enterprise support. About Suresh Ramaswamy: Suresh Ramaswamy is the former Group Vice President of Global Customer Support at Cornerstone OnDemand, where he leads global support strategy and operations. With extensive experience in scaling enterprise support organizations, he is passionate about leveraging AI, knowledge management, and customer intelligence to build more efficient, proactive, and customer-centric support experiences. About The Pivot Point: Real conversations with business and technology leaders exploring how AI, innovation, leadership, and customer experience are reshaping the modern enterprise. 🔔 Subscribe:    / @thepivotpointpodcasts   📸 Instagram:   / thepivotpointpodcasts   #ThePivotPoint #customersupport #knowledgemanagement #agenticai #enterpriseai #customerexperience #customersuccess #knowledgesharing #artificialintelligence #digitaltransformation