Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, Design & Operations shares how 8×8 is creating solutions for new customer service professionals.
A few weeks ago I had to make a complaint after a bit of a rubbish stay in a hotel.
It’s not something that comes naturally to a lot of people but we all have those points where we say enough is enough. On this occasion, it was being woken up at 7 am by the loudest gaggle of hens I’ve ever heard, along with the unmistakable sound of drilling just over an hour later.
It’s never an easy conversation, which may be why the place where these interactions have spread as the way we communicate changes. Some will prefer the in-person approach if it’s possible, others will pick up the phone, personally one of the more effective ways that I’ve found a resolution to an issue is by tweeting the brand.
But while finding a resolution may be easier if you criticise a company on social media, for the business, dealing with the issue in the first place is one of the modern headaches they have to deal with.
Naturally, there are solutions on the market, combining social media and chatbots with the traditional call centre, but none are specifically tailored for who Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, design and operations at 8×8 describes as a “knowledge worker”.
“We realised there are users outside of the contact centre who will interact with customers or support those who do,” said Soni. “They need the same information that the contact centre agents need, like the CRM integrations, AI analytics, and the calling capability so they can jump on calls as and when they need to.
“But these workers are very different from an agent, in fact, they’re really not an agent, they identify as a knowledge worker, or a software engineer, a billing specialist, a researcher, nurse, or receptionist.
“These are the roles that we see as a ‘knowledge worker’, they collaborate internally, but then jump on calls with customers to help them out. When they touch base with customers it creates high value for the customer which converts into high CSAT scores.”
With such value on the line, 8×8 has launched Engage, a cross-organisation solution that seeks to connect every department to the contact centre in order to bridge the “gaps” that appear when customers have a problem.
The idea is to improve the quality of the resolution for the customer by giving these knowledge workers the tools to deliver a quality service. As Soni points out, these interactions are often more important than the average call and often need first-hand experience to find a resolution.
“The KPIs for these employees are different than the contact centre agents,” said Soni. “In the contact centre, the most important number is the fastest time to close a ticket, whereas customer satisfaction is more important for knowledge workers.
“These are a very different group of workers and it’s where we started blurring the lines between UC and CC, to offer one platform that can have capabilities from our CPaaS solutions. For example, Engage uses the same data lake so if a customer comes in on a contact centre call but is then touched by somebody outside the contact centre, it will be logged as the same interaction, same support ticket, even though it is a different kind of interaction.”
Engaging with Customers
As the areas of communication usually separated between the customer-facing and the business-orientated roles begin to converge, an opportunity presents itself.
With Engage customers are able to feed data lakes with rivers of customer interactions, allowing businesses to quench their thirst for actionable insights.
“Now this interaction data is stored in a data lake, we can generate insights like health scores, sentiment scores, the customer NPS and CSAT. These insights are a lot richer for both an agent inside the contact centre and our CX user professional outside the contact centre.
“That’s where we felt this was a truly underserved market. Around 60 per cent of employees in each organisation are sitting there helping customers, but they don’t have the right tool with the CC-centric features, that’s what brought about Engage.”
The Way of Water
The contact centre is one of the many areas where artificial intelligence has been able to make a significant impact on the productivity of employees.
While a lot of the communications industry is worrying about jobs, Soni says that the approach that 8×8 is taking is to treat AI as a commodity everyone has access to.
“We treat AI like electricity, it’s going to be the norm,” said Soni. “The capabilities are ramping up at the moment but we don’t have to go shout about our solutions having AI in it; of course they do!
“The approach at 8×8 is to have a native AI layer which is augmented using a solution from our Technology Partner Ecosystem. But the real benefit is found when this data flows into a customer interaction data platform (CIDP) layer.
“This CIDP is where businesses get the insights based on AI in the workspace. Whether with Engage, UC, or CC solutions, employees can already find AI-centric tools like automatic summarisation or automatically syncing back to the CRMs.
“The insights get stronger the deeper you go into a platform. Businesses using contact centre, for example, will see a lot of agent assists showing up in order to solve the users’ problems, and the insights filter through to all of our customer base.”
When Two Become One
While the merging of unified communications and the contact centre brings an opportunity to analyse more data, the end product still needs to improve the day-to-day experience for employees.
In producing the Engage solution, it seems that 8×8 has put the knowledge worker at the heart of the solution; and that is not by accident.
“Throughout my career, I’ve grounded myself in creativity with a view of the customers,” said Soni. “I think we have to put the customer at the heart of everything that we build from a creative design standpoint, and even from a solution standpoint, the problem statement starts with ‘what does the customer need?’
“If our approach to product design or product management was just filling the RFP, we’d produce the same as everybody else. Yes, we’d check all the boxes, but that’s not the approach we want. Our approach is to solve the problems that customers have.”
Soni is coming up to five years at 8×8, in which time she has combined the necessity for creativity with a Masters in Strategic Management, by no means an easy undertaking.
On the road to becoming Vice President of Product Management, Design, and Operations she has been able to instil a design approach that centres around the customer and values research into the issues out there in the market that informs the design of the next solution.
“When we talk to our customers they don’t tell us they want UC and CC, they tell us the problem they have and ask us to solve it,” said Soni. “That’s why my approach to product management and design is that we are solving a problem for a business or a user.
“We start with that premise and then build the UI, build the product, and scale it up. We are catering to the customer rather than just adding features.”
Proof in the Pudding
Soni said she’s proud of the changes that she has brought in that have led to award-winning platforms and “A-Grade” usability scores.
One of the things that caught my ear when speaking to Soni was that customers can “leave their brain at home” when they are using a lot of 8×8 solutions, essentially meaning that employees can still be productive even on their worst days.
An interesting concept, and one I dare say we’ll see a lot more of in the coming years. For now though, Soni says this culture change is bearing fruit, adding that “in the 2023 Metrigy Report, 8×8 was voted number one against all our UC and CC competitors for customer sentiment and business success.
“That means that the seats that we have sold are starting to show in terms of customer satisfaction, which is something I value.
“For me, launching a product is just step one, it’s like delivering a baby you have to nurture it and watch it grow. We ask if it is delivering value for the user? Are our users still happy? Are they recommending the product? Is adoption growing? Is the daily active usage rate where we want it to be?
“It’s about grounding the company and the product managers into building a product that they can be very proud of. That’s the kind of approach I have brought to 8×8 and I am very happy with where we are today.”
