INSIGHT Jason Roos - Cirrus
“With our customers able to make the technical switch very quickly, the Cirrus team focused on equipping
customers to make the arguably harder cultural and operational shift.” Jason Roos, CEO - Cirrus
COVID-19 – The Response of a
CCaaS Service Provider
In this article Jason Roos, CEO of Cirrus, takes us through the different phases of the pandemic and how the
CCaaS Service Provider has responded
The primary focus of
Cirrus and their partners
has been to support the
customers; to quickly
understand the unprecedented
challenges being faced and help
them to overcome these. As we
take a moment to re ect, there
has been a number of phases
that we have gone through,
each one requiring a di erent
response from Cirrus. Let me
explain.
Phase one – the lockdown
As we realised the UK could
not avoid the pandemic, we
quickly learned about social
distancing; toilet paper and
pasta disappeared from
supermarket shelves and then
came the announcement of
lockdown. For contact centres it
was a massive challenge. How
do you switch overnight from
a predominantly o ce-based
function to a virtual contact
centre where everyone works
from home?
Cirrus customers were in a
better position than most; they
already had the capability to
operate a virtual contact centre
as our cloud solution is designed
to enable agents to connect
from any location using any
device. With our customers able
to make the technical switch
very quickly, the Cirrus team
focused on equipping customers
to make the arguably harder
cultural and operational shift.
We helped supervisors who
would traditionally walk the
oor to use our dashboards
and reporting to manage
virtual agent performance.
We also assisted our clients to
enable intelligent routing to
accommodate exible working.
Phase two – responding to
demand
As the country adjusted to
lockdown, home schooling and
the impossible task of cutting
our own hair, our customers
faced a new set of challenges.
Traditional voice channels came
under tremendous pressure as
demand soared and less agents
were available to work.
Again, technically Cirrus
could respond quickly by
scaling capacity for customers
to accommodate demand, but
we also encouraged customers
to be innovative - to expand
their self-service channels and
to enable their agents to manage
interactions over a wide range
of channels, including email,
social media and chat.
Phase three - the virtual
reality
is is the phase we are in now,
the recognition that the virtual
contact centre is the reality of
the future. e role of Cirrus
and our partners over the past
few month has changed again,
from responding to what is
happening now, to working
with our customers to learn
from recent experiences to
better equip their contact
centres for the future.
Whereas many organisations
claimed to be driving digital
transformation, we have seen
this accelerate tremendously.
e pandemic has exposed the
weakness of operating channel
silos and the need to create
a true omni-channel contact
centre with ‘super agents’ that
are equipped to interact with
customers over any channel and
have a connected view of the
customer journey.
We have seen the value
o ered by automation, using
conversational AI and machine
learning to transform selfservice
channels; de ecting the
mundane interactions away
from agents and enabling them
to focus on those engagements
that add the most value.
Knowledge Management
and the seamless integration of
systems is also key. Enabling
a consistent experience to be
delivered across all customer
touchpoints and making it
easy for customers to engage
with your business via their
channel of choice have become
paramount.
Emerging stronger
As a company that was born
in the cloud, the exibility,
elasticity and resilience of our
CCaaS solution has
enabled Cirrus to help
our customers respond
to and overcome the
challenges that they
have faced. But what
I am most proud of is
the way that our team,
and our partners, have
responded. We have
clearly demonstrated
our customer- rst
approach, being there
every step of the way to
guide our customers,
support them and
help them to apply
innovation to business
challenges.
For me there are three things
that have emerged from the
past six months as being the
critical success factors for any
business: agility, innovation and
customer experience.
Having the right technology
foundation to enable you to
move quickly is key and the
next twelve months will see
an increase in cloud contact
centre adoption. Innovation is
also critical; the pandemic has
had a cultural impact that is
changing customers’ preferences
and behaviours. We are already
working with customers to
respond to this with innovative
new ways to interact.
Fundamentally, the pandemic
has underlined what we already
knew: customer experience
is vital. ose organisations
that have been there for their
customers and genuinely tried
to help have created loyalty that
will enable them to emerge even
stronger.
38 | Comms Business Magazine | September 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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