Rob Smith’s mission throughout his career has been to help organizations modernize their technology and way of working.
Today, as vice president and general manager for public sector at Sprinklr, he’s doing just that. Smith helps agencies adopt enterprise software to deliver citizen services using Sprinklr’s unified customer experience management platform.
Below, Smith shares how his career came to fruition from the beginning, the opportunities he’s had along the way and what he’s currently working on at Sprinklr. Plus, learn why he’s dedicated to the GovCon mission.
I noticed you received your undergrad degree in psychology with a minor in business administration. Were you always interested in pursuing this area?
Yes, I was always interested in psychology, particularly studying how people think, make decisions and act. Combining psychology with business gave me a great foundation for the two chapters of my career — first in management consulting and then business leadership.
What gave you your start after graduate school, and how did that lead or direct your professional career to follow?
I was so thankful to earn an opportunity to join a consulting firm early in my career. It was such a wonderful place to get a wide variety of exposure to several different industries solving a number of different business problems. Management consulting helped to teach me how to solve business problems through a defined methodology to drive a client’s desired outcome.
Today at Sprinklr, an enterprise software company for unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM), I use my consulting experience to help me apply these learned management consulting principles to tackle challenges and think creatively every day with teammates and customers.
Can you briefly describe the progression of your career? What ultimately led you to Sprinklr?
There have really been two chapters in my career — management consulting and business leadership. I’ve worked with numerous government and Fortune 1000 companies in a variety of areas including sofware-as-a-service-based solutions, enterprise analytics and custom agile development. Early in my career, I held several positions with management consulting firms providing business process management, program management, product development, and enterprise change management solutions to both government and commercial customers.
In every role, I’ve always wanted to help companies modernize their technology and their way of working. This mission drove me to Sprinklr. At Sprinklr, I’m helping the public sector tackle the challenges of digital transformation, which is incredibly exciting.
The public sector has been fundamentally changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Services need to be delivered in a new, digital way based on modern social channels that citizens prefer. Citizens want to be listened to, understood and engaged with on channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. This is a huge challenge for many public sector organizations. That’s why I came to Sprinklr — to solve this digital customer experience management pain point.
What are your primary priorities for 2021-2022?
Sprinklr’s Public Sector team is focused on addressing the digital customer experience management needs of civilian agencies, national defense and intelligence communities, state and local governments, and higher education.
As people increasingly flock to social media and messaging channels to ask questions and get news, the public sector has an obligation to provide factual information on the channels citizens use the most. Our mission is to help the public sector achieve this in an efficient, compliant and personalized way across all channels.
There’s also a growing opportunity now to provide citizen services through social channels versus through long waits on a customer service line or through poorly designed websites. Citizens now want services through channels of their choice and at a point of need. That’s why we call Sprinklr a unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform — we’re helping the public sector unify their point solutions to create a unified citizen experience across modern channels.
Working with federal customers, how do you approach innovation? How do you approach helping your clients solve their challenges with Sprinklr solutions?
Sprinklr takes a very pragmatic approach to helping our federal customers deliver citizen services more effectively and efficiently through modern channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, etc. Our primary use cases include the following:
- Drive Citizen Awareness of Government Resources & Services
- Deliver Government Services Efficiently at Scale
- Manage Risk with Efficient Crisis Response
Sprinklr approaches innovation by starting with the art of the possible. We make customers aware of the opportunities they have to engage citizens in a better, more unified and efficient way. For example, we can highlight how federal customers can reduce the demand on systems, call centers and support functions by utilizing artificial intelligence to triage and respond to the influx of inbound communication across modern channels.
What about this industry excites you?
I’ve always admired people who serve our country and deliver positive mission outcomes in the process. They are truly dedicated to this mission with commitment, persistence and determination to public service and our great country.
If our Sprinklr team can help make life easier for people who are dedicating their whole lives to support the public good and the mission, then we’ve done our job. It’s fantastic to be a part of this. Especially now, more than ever, we’re helping to solve complex citizen engagement challenges brought on by the pandemic.
It’s an incredible opportunity to use technology to improve citizen experiences and make citizens happier doing it.
Where do you see yourself in the future?
I see myself helping our public sector customers at Sprinklr deliver services to citizens on the channels that matter most, with ease. New channels are emerging all the time — from TikTok to Clubhouse — and the public sector needs to understand how to manage these channels effectively in order to understand and engage with citizens at scale. I’m excited to see our technology continue to advance with AI and automation, and am looking forward to being part of the effort to transform citizen experience and engagement.