AI, User Outreach, and the Road Ahead with Phil Christianson, Xurrent’s New CPO
Xurrent recently welcomed Phil Christianson as our new Chief Product Officer, and he’s already making a major impact! As a significant part of his role as CPO, Phil works closely with Xurrent’s engineering organization to ensure the Xurrent platform continues to drive the innovation and reliability our customers demand. He’s thrilled to be with Xurrent, and recently sat down with us to share his experience, insights, and plans for the future.
Luke: Hi Phil! Thanks for meeting! Can you quickly introduce yourself before we get started?
Phil: Thanks Luke! First off, thanks for chatting with me. I couldn’t be more excited to be here. I joined Xurrent as CPO at the beginning of March. I’ve been a Product Management professional for over a decade, most recently at Wayfair.com, where I led our pricing platform. I was responsible for setting and changing all 25 million product prices on the site, and making sure we did it quickly and without error. Prior to Wayfair, I spent a decade at an enterprise software company, where I was first introduced to product management and built out a large variety of capabilities, from an iPad app to cloud-based software. I live in Boston with my wife and two small children. When I’m not PM’ing, you can find me running, fishing or skiing (in the unlikely event that we actually get snow here in New England).
Luke: Can you lay out what your role will be at Xurrent?
Phil: It’s been a luxury to walk into an organization that has such a solid technical foundation. Xurrent has built a platform that operates on a zero-bug backlog and has the ability to scale to 50 times our current size without any major re-platforming. And we have a very active and engaged customer base. So, job number-one will be to keep this momentum going. From a process perspective, I’m a big believer in ‘customer-first’ product development. I want every feature to be used by a customer on Day 1 of its release, then gather feedback and iterate rapidly. If we are confident that every feature we build solves a real customer problem, it’s tough to fail. So, if you haven’t heard from me already, you may soon!
I’ll also be responsible for our product roadmap into 2024 and beyond. There’s an incredible amount of exciting initiatives on the table, from new AI capabilities like ‘Note Summarization’ and ‘ChatBots,’ to more native integration workflows that will be available out of the box. As we begin to ramp up a presence in the US, the nature of the market here will also translate into new capabilities. I’m looking forward to diving into all of these, and sharing more at our Connect 24 conference in May!
Luke: So, tell us about how your first 30 days have been. What’s your first impression of Xurrent?
Phil: Apart from the warm welcome, I’ll share a few things I’ve noticed from meeting with our customers and getting to know the software:
- Xurrent has a vibrant and smart user community. I’ve heard from every customer I met that they love the software and the collaborative nature of the company. People read our weekly release notes, engage in our Xurrent online community, and share feedback freely. Xurrent has built its success on listening to its customers and community. I was blown away when I saw the volume of customer RFCs being cranked through every month by our engineering team.
- Xurrent has become a thought leader in the ITSM market, and it shows in the software. Organizations expect to level up their processes and efficiency when they buy Xurrent, and they do.
- In the saturated ITSM and ESM market, customers choose us because of our easy implementations, our responsive and advanced R&D team, and the fact that Xurrent just plain works all the time. It’s a complete set of capabilities for our customers! I would be more daunted by the size of the market were it not for the quality of Xurrent’s offering and its vibrant user community.
Luke: Let’s close with some forward-looking thoughts: What’s top of mind for Xurrent R&D as you look ahead?
Phil:
- Transparency, Transparency, Transparency
- I believe in full transparency when it comes to our R&D plans. I want to share what’s coming next and hear from customers what’s missing. There are really no secrets here – I want to make sure to have an open-door policy for all customers and partners.
- Artificial Intelligence (Data-driven and with customer value validation!)
- IT service software is very well-positioned to take advantage of AI, by using it to help customers find answers to their questions quickly and inexpensively. At our core, Xurrent is a customer service platform. While we need to be very careful with privacy constraints, we are able to see trends and use AI to help our customers provide better service to their users. Our tech team is not just talking about AI, but already delivering. We’re seeing promising early trends in the usage of our new note-summary capability, for example. I want to continue to take a pragmatic, data-driven approach to AI improvements. If we think we can improve efficiency or make workflows faster with AI, we’re going to do it!
- Focus on use-case education and out-of-the-box workflow integrations
- Xurrent has absolutely top-notch processes and features for IT professionals looking to improve their ability to service large enterprises out of the box. What people may not realize is that we also have strong capabilities that add value far outside IT – including for MSPs, DevOps, and more. The flexibility and power of our workflow tools provide organizations with the ability to automate tasks. Our ‘trust’ system, enabled by our cloud-native capabilities, brings unrivaled implementation and expansion possibilities. For example, something as simple as activating a user in the Active Directory, uploading a file to SharePoint, or creating an incident from a LogicMonitor alert – our tools can do all of this! If we want to be the central nervous system of an organization, we need to continue to focus on integration automation capabilities delivered quickly and inexpensively out of the box.
Xurrent is delighted to have Phil on board; his energy and wisdom are already powerfully bolstering Xurrent’s commitment to offering the most user-friendly, technologically advanced, and comprehensive ITSM platform on the market. Stay tuned to find out more about what’s in store next.