INTERVIEW Craig Walker - Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
“It’s no longer a one size fits all, it’s bespoke to the user and your experience won’t necessarily be the
same to mine” Craig Walker, VP of Cloud Services for Europe North at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
Improving
service through
automation
Ask most CEOs and
managing directors what
the most important key
performance indicators
are for their company and the
Net Promoter Score will almost
certainly be on the list.
In a roundtable discussion
published in Technology
Business Today earlier this
year, the consensus amongst
CEOs was that, service and
the handling of customers
and potential disasters is more
important that the customer or
disaster itself; starting with the
rst interaction.
“Calls can now come
through to a desk phone,
mobile or PC so that you’re
never out of reach for your
customers” said Walker
“ at means that even small
businesses can look like a big
company. A one man band like
a roofer, for example, he can
carry on with his job and never
miss a call and opportunity to
win some business.
is is where the return on
investment on that is. Let’s
say you miss ve calls a week
and each could bring you in
£10,000 worth of work, you
now have a way to capture
those calls and potentially
win £50,000-a-week worth of
business.
But now, any size business
they are realising that they
Automated voices on customer service lines have become all the range for large
consumer-focused enterprises but can resellers utilise such a solution, Craig Walker,
VP of Cloud Services for Europe North at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, believes so
can deal with the multitude of
enquiries and repeat enquiries
simply and easily without doing
it manually.
We have a customer in
Norway and they thought
the would be able to o oad
30,000 calls a week from one
department just by answering
standard questions like ‘what
will my TAX code be’ which
they estimated the return on
investment to be two days of
working hours.”
Not missing calls and saving
time on menial calls may be a
couple of sides of the argument
but automation comes with its
downsides.
Walker points out that,
when dealing with incoming
calls, although automation is an
e ective way of helping callers
nd the right department, it is
not the rst choice for everyone.
“You’ve got to handle
millennials who use a phone
as a primary device, those who
can only take calls on their
phones, whereas people like me
can use a hands-free desk phone
and walk around. en you
have people who want to serve
themselves on the web and the
older generation and impatient
people who know what they
want and want to get in and out
as quickly as possible.
erefore you’ve got to
be exible in the channels
of communications that you
o er but also how you take
conversations and manage them
and detect their sentiment using
a bot meaning that if you see
someone is going self-serve but
can’t nd what they want you
can jump in and o er a hand or
if someone is getting frustrated
with a bot you can jump in and
talk to them.
It’s no longer a one size ts
all, it’s bespoke to the user
and your experience won’t
necessarily be the same to
mine so the goal is to tailor
that experience to the client,
customer, partner, whoever and
make sure their experience ts
them.”
As for the internal
communications of a company,
Walker added that they have
seen employees opinion of
UCaaS solutions change once
they have taken the time to use
them.
“Part of it is the resistance
to change and that will always
happen, the ability to adopt
technology isn’t the speed
at which we can throw the
technology out its how quickly
people can manage that change
and drive that change.
Once you can get the
change adopted, try to take
it o them! We have loads of
examples where we start o
with connectivity and mobilise
people.
In hospitals, the consultants,
now have a desk phone on
your mobile and they can be
reached anywhere. e logistics
guys and the porters were fully
resistant but after three months
the consultants want to get rid
of it, complaining that they
can be reached anywhere and
the porters are saying it’s saving
them hours.
It’s a complete change and
the change management and
adoption of change is absolutely
critical. When we talk about
UC and CPaaS and business
processes the hardest part isn’t
the sell to the line manager or
IT guy, the hardest thing to do
is to get it deployed and adopted
so the customer gets the ROI.”
66 | Comms Business Magazine | September 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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