Search Results

In this time of uncertainty, keeping the ‘lights on’ has been the challenge for many customer service centres, but that doesn’t need to be the only goal for strategic thinkers. We’ve come up with a list of 4 ways to take advantage of the current market, enabling contact centres to work better, smarter and more effectively, without increasing overall costs. 1. Standardise, Stabilise and Optimise – This is not as hard as you may think, it just takes a bit of work: Define your goals Create or document the current KPI’s against those goals Create a detailed process flow of each working practice Look for ‘waste’ in the process and ask yourself what can be improved with; automation, resource allocation, technology implementation, process optimisation, etc. Redraw the process flow with this in mind Execute the new process flow Re-measure KPI’s Now, once you’ve implemented what you find, go back and start again and then again and then again. It’s persistence, skill and repeated execution which differentiates the great from the good. 2. The Gig Economy – Many customer service centres are struggling with staffing levels for peak time support and need resource fast and on tap. The gig economy is fast becoming the go-to for reliable on-demand agent resource. Students, stay at home parents, furloughed staff, ‘retired’, you name it and there is a demographic that are looking for temporary, flexible micro-shifts in the industry. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people wanting to work from home for this type of role, and it’s easily scalable. 3. Speech Analytics (SA) – Speech Analytics works in parallel with your call recorder and it can have a compelling ROI. It’s a way to proactively and automatically manage service quality in an efficient and scalable way. The quality control team no longer need to listen to call after call for hour after hour, with speech analytics each call is automatically ‘listened to’ and graded against the KPI’s you set. This could be words or phrases, tone, sentiment, objection handling, or several hundred other metrics you deem fit. Look at the image to give you an idea of just some of the metrics. A speech analytics system can recognise words and screen pop information or identify if an agent needs assistance in real-time, it can identify training needs, find areas for coaching, ensure new employees are compliant, provide opportunities for self-analysis/improvement, offer gamification to teams, identify problem trends and a host of other benefits which in this ‘new’ world of hybrid working and changing customer expectations is a powerful tool and the most efficient way to ensure quality and improve customer service with every call. Take a look at the screenshot below as an indication of just some of what can be measured: 4. Bots, Bots and more Bots - The bots have arrived and they’re making a big splash within the customer service space. Both for internal and external customers. Bots can do a variety of helpful things but in their simplest form they’re a way to provide information efficiently, 'just in time' and with minimal resource. For example, a customer may want a returns policy or insurance document and instead of requesting this over the phone they can converse with to a webchat bot and automatically be presented with the information. Another example of using a bot is when you ask Amazon Alexa or Apple’s Siri for a store opening times or directions etc. You can even provide value added information for example, provide a weather forecast or follow on information for what a customer might want to do next. Often the biggest efficiency bots provide is on internal resource. Requests such as, ‘please reset my password, please can you provide my payslip, what’s the procedure for claiming expenses, how much annual leave do I have left, what’s the company policy on equal opportunities, my laptop is frozen what should I do’, all of these questions can be managed by bots, that’s not to say they don’t need a person present but perhaps by way of monitoring rather than managing transactional functions within a contact centre. As you can see these are a few ways in which companies are taking advantage of the modern working environment. If you like to know more about these and other optimisation ideas contact us on info@soniza.co.uk

We’ve all heard it, “working from home is going to become the new normal”, “the workplace will never be the same again”, “businesses aren’t going to need these large expensive offices any more”, but what doe that mean for workers and businesses? I like many of my colleagues and friends have been working from home for many years. This is not surprising as I work in an industry that promotes agile and home working and therefore those businesses have seen the benefits and reaped the reward. However, while it’s nice not to commute to London on a daily basis and I can spend more time with the family etc there are still some challenges that need to be addressed. For starters some people don’t want to work from home. I have had colleagues in the past that openly admit that working from home doesn’t feel like work, they do the minimum amount to get through and spend most of their time doing ‘other things’ occasionally checking their email to see if they have anything that needs some attention. Is this unprofessional, yes, will it only work for so long, probably, but, they didn’t ask to work from home and quite frankly we've not been trained how to manage our time or what’s expected of us. Then there is the business ‘benefits’, lower office costs, reduction in IT overheads, instant business continuity across the business... But is it practical, what are the downsides? Well firstly how about business culture, one of the hardest things to replicate in a remote environment is business culture, that quick watercooler moment that sparks that idea, winning that large contract that makes the company a success, those beers after work that bond a team together and make everyone ‘feel’ part of something, those things are also difficult. It's also true that it can be lonely working from home and we find our days and calendars are filled with endless conference calls which aren't engaging and in some cases aren't even relevant. In summary, I’m not negative on home working, I think it can be a great compliment to the working environment, and I’m a believer in doing things that add value, so work from home when it adds value to your day and work from the office for the same reason. But agile working isn’t always more efficient and so businesses and individuals alike need to give careful consideration to the working environment before it becomes ‘the norm’.

Soniza have won a major global retailer. The project includes a review of all communications technology and specific business processes. Using principles based on our Lean Six Sigma methodology to Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control each process we will look to optimise operational processes and identify proven technology to support the business over the next 3 years.

Soniza has won a new client providing business support services to over 1,000 clients. Our commission is to review the technology, service and business processes in order that the business becomes more efficient and can support more customers without increasing headcount. We will investigate digital transformation in the service offering, efficiencies to be gained through technology and A.I. and working practices to be adopted and managed in the future. This is a great fit for Soniza playing on our strengths and we look forward to a successful project together. If you'd like to know more about how Soniza can help, please do not hesitate to contact us now.

If the media are to be believed, we are heading into a second lockdown, it may not be quite yet but it sounds like it’s coming and by all accounts, October/November will be the furthest away we can hope for. Many companies still getting to grips with the last lockdown, shifting the workforce to agile working etc. but now they're being asked to plan for the next one, whatever it looks like. COVID19 hit the UK in March 2020 and businesses were forced to make many tactical decisions in order to get their workforce up and running as quickly as possible, this meant buying thousands of laptops and mobiles, buying analogue phones for people to plug in at home and quickly ramping up remote and virtual desktop environment in order to try and keep some control and security over the situation. Lines and DDI’s were diverted, management quickly adapted and those lucky enough not to be furloughed tried to carry on as best they could. We’re now in a state of flux, some staff are working from the office at a ‘social distance’, some continue to work from home and some are still in furlough. The government are easing lockdown but it’s a 50/50 chance that another lockdown returns later this year. This means that companies have a brief opportunity to create and implement a strategic working environment for staff, as opposed to the many tactical decisions that needed to be put in place 6 months prior. In relation to telecoms, this means putting solutions in place which can scale as demand increases/decreases, provide UC functionality to improve communication, can work from anywhere and potentially provide a contact centre function for the most important part of many businesses, customer service. Soniza are offering a free review of clients current telephony platforms which will provide businesses with either the confidence in their current solution or a step by step plan in order to get the right solution in place before October this year. Contact us for more information at info@soniza.co.uk for more details.

Prior to COVID19 hitting the UK, a telecoms procurement could take somewhere between 3 months – 6 months. Since March Soniza has run 5 procurement exercises all being completed in less than 4 weeks. This includes requirements gathering, RFP, supplier engagement, supplier presentations and contract award. So what’s changed? Obviously, urgency has played a big part in the process but what else? For a start, staff focus has been mandatory, staff haven’t had to juggle diaries quite so much and the efficiencies of video conferences and collaboration has made requirements workshops much easier to manage and get engagement on. Compliance, due diligence and company review has been more direct and heavily reliant on accreditations, analyst scores and ISO standards met. Solution analysis has been more collaborative, a lot more supplier engagement, presentations and proof of concepts are happening at scale in real-time which feeds directly into the solution evaluation process. So what does this mean for the future of procurement? The key here is understanding that flexibility and transparency need to be evident, some clients will want to take advantage of a new way to procurement, some will want to go back to the old way and some are bound by regulation. The good news is that suppliers and processes and now in place to ensure whatever method clients prefer, it can be achieved with the right expertise and focus.

As we are easing out of lockdown it is good to take a moment to reflect on how organisations and their customers managed the crisis. When the Coronavirus crisis struck forcing all but key workers to be locked down at home the need for communications was even greater. The speed of lockdown was incredibly fast, shifting the UK’s workforce from their offices into their homes giving organisations minimal time to adjust. Most organisations fast-tracked their Remote Working plans deploying Unified Communication (UC) elements of their telephone platforms, the subsequent demand on vendors, distributors and resellers was considerable. If the inhouse system was not able to support a UC service IT Directors looked to the cloud and mobile providers to meet their needs. Whatever solution was deployed it had to be fast, simply to configure, agnostic to non-corporate network standards and above all, easy to use. The speed to deploy and project constraints became a clear criteria in selecting a new technology partner. Lockdown was not the time to embark on a complex implementation. Customers were also forced to change their engagement with their suppliers. Those organisations with self-service eCommerce platforms were ideally placed to absorb the overnight shift in buying habits, for those without an eCommerce platform the impact of this could be telling. The inbound pressures on customer service teams especially in the travel sector were also exceptional. Contact Centres and Customer Service teams were propelled into supporting multiple digital channels with teams dispersed geographically into their homes. In a pre-COVID world, this was a model rarely implemented. The need to find ways to respond efficiently and effectively to high volumes of digital communication spanning multiple channels ideally suited the adoption of business process automation – the ability to let the system automatically apply content-based intelligent decision routing. There is no doubt that consumers and businesses have been immersed in the world of Digital Transformation without having any choice in this decision. The stock market prices of these providers and underlying cloud computing vendors are compelling evidence of this shift. The cloud UC as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) marketplace has come of age through COVID-19 with IT Directors and CIOs looking to the cloud to beat lockdown. The question now must be, how will the rest of the UC/Contact Centre marketplace respond to retain their market share and counter the shift to cloud user adoption? In summary, maybe this crisis will mark the pivot point in the technology journey where organisations and consumers realised that digital interactions can transform their communication experience.

Soniza have won a new housing association client based in the North East of UK. The project is to help drive digital transformation within the business in order to increase communications efficiently. The strategy will be looking at both front and back office, optimising workflows and processes to increase efficiency across the business. The project includes, Contact Centre, Unified Communications, A.I., CRM, line of business applications and the future of customer contact. We're looking forward to a great project. The Soniza Team

The contact centre market has always moved in cycles as technology allowed it to, from the days of Siemens, Nortel and Avaya owning the market, where ACD and reporting was ‘cutting edge’ to Cisco, Mitel and Genesys offering data (email) integration to the already established voice platforms, but what now… Times are rapidly changing…. Today’s market is a very different place. There are some of these legacy players, but there are some new entrants on the block, 8X8 are making huge headway, Five9, Talkdesk, NICE InContact are all gaining a share of the market while forcing rapid change with great innovative offerings. We had a client recently who wanted a procurement asking ten different manufacturers to bid – a clear statement that the marketplace is diverse and full of offerings for businesses looking for a contact centre.