The new way to staff for Omni-Channel in Service Cloud: A Q&A with Autodesk Construction Cloud
We sat down with Jessica Bright, Customer Support Manager for Autodesk Construction Cloud, to discuss how the company’s global support team is leveraging Assembled’s Case Lifecycle data model and other new technologies to deliver fast, efficient support to customers around the world.
Q. Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) has a diverse range of products and customers. How is your support organization structured to handle this complexity?
A. Our support team is truly global, with hubs in the Americas (AMER), Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). It’s organized into two tiers: a frontline team that handles initial customer contacts and a Tier 2 team for more complex issues. We also have an operational team that focuses on the systems we use, help articles, internal documentation, and data management.
We support customers through multiple channels — chat, email, and inbound phone — and track key performance indicators such as average chat wait time, customer satisfaction, initial response rate, adherence, volume, and quality. Our team was formed through several acquisitions of different construction software companies, which brought unique challenges. Integrating these diverse teams and setting a unified standard of service across all our products, particularly for chat support, was a major focus for us.
Q. What trends have you noticed recently in support operations, particularly in the construction industry?
A. In construction, time is money. If a contractor is working from outdated information, it can lead to costly mistakes and delays. This urgency means our customers need quick, effective solutions. To meet this demand, we’ve placed a big emphasis on live support, such as chat and outbound phone, across all our product suites.
We’ve also seen a renewed focus on AI to improve the customer experience. For ACC, AI isn’t new — we’ve been using support bots to help deflect routine inquiries so that our human agents can focus on conversations that truly require their expertise.
Q. What specific challenges have you encountered with Omni-Channel support, and how have they impacted your staffing models?
A. Omni-Channel support allows us to assign cases to agents based on their skills or specific queues, which is great. However, we support a wide range of products, and there isn’t an even distribution of time spent on each one. Since our agents need to know multiple products, scheduling per product has been a challenge.
Being a global company, we need to staff for 24-hour support, which adds complexity. We realized that our traditional staffing formula wasn’t optimized to handle the need for multi-product support, so we needed a new approach.
Q. How did Assembled’s Case Lifecycle and seasonal forecasting models become a focus for Autodesk, and what changes did you make?
A. Focusing on the entire case lifecycle — from initial contact to resolution — has been a game-changer for us. We wanted Assembled to serve as a single source of truth for both our agents and managers, eliminating the need to switch back and forth between Salesforce Service Cloud and other platforms. The Case Lifecycle approach provides accurate data that builds trust between agents and management, offering a clearer picture of overall performance.
Additionally, the construction industry is highly seasonal, with different products seeing varying levels of activity depending on the time of year. Our traditional staffing models didn’t account for this seasonality. So, we partnered with Assembled to implement a new seasonal forecasting model that aligns with our business needs.
Instead of forecasting for each product individually, we grouped related products into bundles and forecasted based on these suites. This new model allows us to better prepare for seasonal fluctuations and holidays, ensuring we have adequate staffing even during times when support needs are unpredictable.
Q. Can you share an example of how the Case Lifecycle data model has impacted your business processes?
A. We hire new agents in classes, with three to eight people starting at once. This approach creates a great experience for new hires, who can learn together, but it also requires us to be strategic in our planning. The insights from the Case Lifecycle data allow us to see where we need more support agents or where cross-training might be beneficial.
Previously, we lacked visibility into the full picture — such as manually assigned cases or how many cases were being transferred by each agent. Now, with these new data points, we can better understand agent performance, manage capacity more effectively, and make more informed hiring decisions. For example, using Case Lifecycle data as one piece of the puzzle, we improved our average chat wait time from 22 seconds in Q1 to just 13 seconds in Q2.
Q. What are some of the intermediate segments in case movement that were often overlooked in traditional forecasting models?
A. Traditional forecasting models tend to focus heavily on new volume, but they often overlook segments like customer responses and transfer or escalation points. The Case Lifecycle approach with Assembled uses “units of work” as a key metric to make our forecasting more accurate.
For instance, understanding the full journey of a case — from initial agent response to escalations and final resolution — has been a game-changer. This approach helps us see where we can reduce escalations and touchpoints, ultimately improving both agent efficiency and the customer experience.
Q. What future trends or innovations are you excited about in support operations?
A. There’s a big focus on AI right now, and we’re excited about its potential to improve both the customer and agent experience. We’re particularly interested in Salesforce’s "swarming" feature, which allows agents to quickly get help from internal experts, reducing the number of touchpoints and speeding up resolution times.
We’re also exploring new ways to use automation to drive efficiency, especially when it comes to collecting data that informs our decisions. With our current setup in Assembled, we’re prepared to adapt quickly to changes, whether it’s integrating new products or onboarding new acquisitions.
By continuing to refine our operations and embrace new technologies, we’re positioning ACC to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of customer support.
Want to learn more? Read on to learn how teams are perfecting their staffing and saving more money with Case Lifecycle.
