Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: customer service

  • Beating the bots: The evolving call centre business

    Beating the bots: The evolving call centre business

    The call centre business is very much an example of an industry driven by technological change, having only coming into being over the last 50 years as telecommunications became ubiquitous and affordable before being one of the biggest offshored industries.

    In an age of artificial intelligence, web based help pages and chatbots, it’s easy to think the call centre era may be coming to a close but Acticall Sitel Group’s Australian and New Zealand managers Steve Barker, the regional Chief Operating Officer, and Sally Holloway, Director of Business Operations, believe the industry has a long way to go yet.

    Miami based Acticall Sitel Group operates call centres in 22 countries with 75,000 ‘associates’ providing services to over 200 major companies so their view on how the industry is evolving is worth hearing.

    Technological shifts

    Naturally technology is the driving force with the increasing availability of broadband meaning more ‘associates’ can work from home rather than in call centres while cloud services are reducing the cost and complexity of call centres.

    The work from home aspect is proving popular with their clients as well as businesses see retaining skilled staff and the expense of real estate driving many organisations to extend their programs. An interesting observation given IBM’s and Yahoo!’s moves in restricting home office options in recent times.

    Social media has also changed the type of interactions consumers are having with organisations while artificial intelligence and robots – chatbots – are automating many call centre functions.

    A broader industry

    Holloway though says she doesn’t see voice services going away, “some interactions still require the personal touch”, but technology is broadening the ways customers interact with businesses.

    Interestingly, both Holloway and Barker believe that the commoditization of call centres is over as companies have realised the importance of good service in competitive markets although that varies between industries.

    Added to that is the stripping out of costs in areas like customer service has largely run its course over the past few decades and in most organisations there is little fat left to cut from client facing functions.

    Falling prices for technology, if not labour, does offer scope for smaller businesses to engage call centre providers that were once only available to larger corporates.

    Like most industries, the relationship between workers and automation in call centres is playing out in complex ways as staff get to use more advanced skills and low value tasks are given to machines.

    The evolution of the call centre may well be a pointer for other industries as we all grapple with the effects of automation.

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  • Cutting customer support

    Cutting customer support

    One of the greatest mistakes made by companies is cutting customer support. Nothing shows more a management focused on KPIs and financials than reducing its service staff.

    According to Buzzfeed, this is what Uber is doing as the company struggles to contain costs and compete in China.

    The ironic thing in Uber’s actions is the startup was so successful because in many cities the incumbent taxi operators had a culture of dire customer service.

    It may be that having seen Uber win the battles, the poor consumer is about to lose the war for better transportation services.

    Should that be the case, then Uber’s customer service woes shows the new generation of tech startups isn’t so immune to the old rules of business after all.

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  • Maintaining an organisation’s values

    Maintaining an organisation’s values

    “I always compare it to moving out of your family’s basement,” says Zendesk founder Mikkel Svane about his company’s going public last year.

    Svane was talking to Decoding The New Economy after 18 eventful months that have seen the company go public and his publishing of a book on the journey of taking a startup to the market.

    “There’s a lot of things you have to do different,” says Svane on becoming a listed company. “You’re on your own in many ways and you have to explain how things make sense. I think we’ve really embraced it and we enjoy it.”

    Relaxed about the unicorns

    While Zendesk was never classified as ‘unicorn’, having never been valued a billion dollars while private,  Svane is relaxed about the stratospheric valuations of the current group of tech unicorns.

    “Most of these unicorn companies are amazing, they are changing the world and the lives of people,” he says. “Even if there is a correction most of these companies will do fine.”

    “The thing about the private market is you don’t have pessimism build in, you only have optimism,” Svane explains. “But in the public markets there are people shorting your stock because they have a different view, you don’t have that when you’re private. That’s why valuations can get a little out of control.”

    Taming the enterprise

    For Svane, his optimistic view comes partly from Zendesk’s entry into the enterprise market, “in the last couple of years we’ve had some incredible momentum. We’ve done that while we’ve stayed true to our roots, to the small businesses and the startups.”

    “Enterprises have a different set of needs and issues, the bigger you get as a company the harder it is to be agile and nimble.”

    “Companies have hundreds of thousands of customers, they have millions of interactions and have all these data points. Managing these data points is hard. They also have to deal with compliance and have to figure out all these different things.”

    Understanding one’s values

    Figuring out many different things is one of the themes touched on Svane’s book Startup Land which he sees as being important in helping both he and the company understand their values, “I thought it was important to be honest about our roots and where we come from.”

    “We haven’t sorted everything out,” he says. “Things are still complicated for us and we’re still in the early stages of building the company we want to build.”

    “I think it’s important when you’re a fast growing company, doubling in size every year, having an anchor point about what you are is important. If you have a good clear idea of where you come from and why you do what you do it’s easier.”

    Creating business value

    “The process of writing this book helped me understand a lot better why we’re doing this. Not that I found the answers but now I have a much better understanding.”

    For Svane one of the things he’s proudest of over the past two years is how many people that Zendesk’s success has helped, “it’s important to create wealth for every one. One of the things I’m proud of is how we’ve created wealth for regular employees, we complete changed their lives.”

    “As long as you’re creating real wealth, not just for shareholder and investors, then that’s something to be proud of.”

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  • Adventures in Startupland – the brutal truth of starting a business

    Adventures in Startupland – the brutal truth of starting a business

    Startupland is a magical, mythical place where the unicorns roam free and much of the advice dished out to nascent entrepreneurs has more in common with a romantic fantasy novel than the hard work of building a business.

    Mikkel Svane’s Startupland is not one of those books. Svane, the co-founder and CEO of cloud based customer business Zendesk, is instead a tough description of the challenges and personal costs of venturing into business for yourself and the harsh, demanding realities of the Silicon Valley statup model.

    “No-one tells you how little you get paid,” warns Svane as he charts his own journey from developing and selling through Stockholm’s computer shops of the mid 1990s a basic program that created 3D optical illusions through to floating Zendesk on the NASDAQ in 2014.

    During Zendesk’s journey Svane and his business partners experienced the entire range of challenges that a business founder could face ranging from managing high growth, laying off staff in the face of a downturn, the inevitable pivots and, sadly, the passing of a valued employee.

    “Startups are fragile” warns Svane and observes how he nearly fell for the trap all business owners have been tempted by in doing consulting work to provide cash for the business. Invariably the side job comes to dominate and the new venture withers due to lack of attention.

    Working from home

    For those starting out in business, whether it’s a tech startup or something a big more mundane, the observations and tips on working for home are worthwhile in themselves, if you find you’re one of the type that “sits at home and eats toasts and masturbates” then it’s probably best to find an office or coworking space.

    Having had the opportunity to interview Svane a number of times, his own passion and character comes clearly out of the book including his view that seemingly boring things like customer support is sexy, citing how Marilyn Monroe fell for Arthur Miller (although that didn’t end well).

    The ‘boring is sexy’ mantra is one Svane repeats throughout the book, and his contention is seemingly mudane areas like customer support are where the real business opportunities lie.

    Business is about relationships

    Ultimate Svane sees business as being about relationships; between customers, staff and investors. His view on accepting investor’s money is an important lesson from the book.

    “Great investors have unique relationships with their founders, and they are dedicated to growing the company,” writes Svane. “Mediocre and bad investors work around founders, and the company ends in disaster.”

    The brutal truth

    In telling the brutal truth about starting a business Svane gives anyone considering the idea of ditching the cubicle a realistic view of the challenges ahead. That advice alone will save many families from the stresses and costs of self employment and startup land.

    Those considering entering the world of startups, small business or self-employment should read Startupland. If you’ve already started that journey, then Svane’s story is worth reading to show you aren’t alone in your daily challenges.

     

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  • Klout and marketing’s holy grail – an interview with Joe Fernandez

    Klout and marketing’s holy grail – an interview with Joe Fernandez

    For three months in 2007 Joe Fernandez had his jaw wired shut following surgery and found himself relying on social media for news and companionship.

    Over that three months of sitting on the net Fernandez found he had become a social media influencer and the idea for Klout was born.

    In many respects Klout is the classic startup in that Fernandez started with a series of spreadsheets with the algorithm being an Excel formula, something he now calls a ‘Minimal Minimum Viable Product’.

    “It was super minimal,” Fernandez remembers. “When people would register for Klout, it would send me an email and I would manually download their social media data into Excel and run the algorithm and then I’d manually update their page.”

    Today Klout processes fifteen billion accounts every day with data pulled from four hundred data points including 15 social media services.

    Like all tools, Klout does have some limitations and Fernandez admits he gets frustrated with businesses giving priority to users with high scores, another area that concerns him is marketers who don’t examine the relevance of individuals to the business before making judgments on that person’s influence.

    One of the key things that Fernandez is proud of is how Klout is spawning its own alumni in a similar way to the PayPal mafia that developed out of the payment service at the beginning of the Century.

    “It’s really awesome to see people go on and take on big challenges and do different things.”

    As social media develops, tools like Klout are going to become more important for businesses trying to understand how

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