UC providers often talk in terms of the differentiated customer experience they deliver to their customers, but often UC services adopt a simple cookie-cutter approach of common functions wrapped together. These deliver a broadly similar experience regardless of which service provider is selected, so differentiating on experience and delivering customer delight is sometimes more talk than action.
“UC is a critical necessity for modern business and therefore is treated like any other utility service,” says Nir Galpaz, the Group Vice President of Technical Services and Support at 8×8. “Like a utility service, you just want it to work, and work consistently, and that’s what customers’ expectations are. Under this broad statement of operation conditions, customers want a tool that allows them to do business easily and with a minimal amount of effort, while being provided with service when and on whatever channel they choose. This adaptability and flexibility is where UC vendors can differentiate themselves.”
Galpaz has been quick to recognise the changing needs of UC users and he has refined 8×8’s approach to customer service resulting in the company’s entire customer service organisation winning a Silver Stevie Award in the Customer Service Department of the Year category at the 19th Annual International Business Awards. He attributes this success, which also recognised his own leadership with a Gold Stevie Award in the Customer Service Executive of the Year category, to 8×8’s in-depth understanding of the market and users’ expectations of UC services.
“There has been a mindshift between consumer and business activities, resulting in a lot of overlap in many cases but also a lot of differences,” Galpaz explains. “We’re still getting used to a changed world in which the consumer expects instant gratification and automation, however this is now also coming to the business world. Across the board people are now used to that consumer level of service, forgetting the fact that business systems and workflows are more complex, making it that much harder to provide consumer-level service in a business environment.”
Expectations are changing in business and so is the underlying infrastructure. The move from on-premise to cloud solutions has levelled the playing field between UC providers, limiting the potential to differentiate, leaving few levers for UC providers to pull. Galpaz believes the customer experience is one area where UC providers can showcase their specific capabilities.
“You can differentiate on different levels, feature functionality, price, reliability, service, and more,” said Galpaz.
“I believe that reliability combined with customer experience should be a huge area of focus.”
As a result, 8×8 has targeted the customer experience it delivers end-to-end, assembling the blend of technology and people necessary to address the friction points and solve them. Part of this relies on automation to reduce the number of calls to the contact centre, while still maintaining or improving the customer experience. Galpaz says that most customers prefer to solve their own problems, so investment has been made in chatbots and Q&A with the focus on addressing common problems at the first touchpoint.
This frees up customer service representatives to deal with more complex calls and 8×8 has focused on recruiting personnel with the dual skills of technical ability and communications strength. Again, the intent is to handle queries effectively and quickly, thereby delivering the experience customers
want. To achieve this, you can’t simply add personnel, the cost of service provision has to remain competitive.
“The interesting thing about 8×8 is how we have achieved our customer service improvements in today’s macro-economic environment,” says Galpaz. “The challenge has been how to do this in a smart way, and that’s all about the mix of skill, focus and tools. The reason we’ve been given the awards is because we’re making huge progress over a short period of time, and we’re going to keep progressing. We are at a high standard here but we’ll keep aiming higher. We never stop.”
