CX No Longer Just a Contact Centre Play

Formation Tech specialise in the mid-market UCaaS and CCaaS space. As providers of both, they have a niche in the mixed technology play. I spoke to Co-Founders Dan Cholerton and Mark Tyers to learn their first-hand experience of businesses requiring customer experience enhancing functionality within their UCaaS platform.

Customer experience

Dan said “The nature of consumers – and what they expect – crosses over to business life. Every business must consider not just an IVR, but the opportunities they provide their customers on the terms that want to communicate on. That could be social media, online or a good old-fashioned call. The market is pretty buoyant on our offering right now”.

As a millennial with a customer service machine in my pocket, I suggested that I would always expect the experience to be perfect if I had to make a call. I walked through examples of holding on web chat and sending a few tweets – and still needing to make a call.

Mark said

“People are used to using all sorts of media channels and they expect them all to be really good. By the time someone needs to call you, it needs to be as efficient as possible. At this point, they have a specific need and have exhausted all other channels possible”.

Contact centre principles in UCaaS

“As a result of that, we’re seeing organisations interested in the principles of contact centre and workforce management capabilities but without changing the organisational structure. The bottom line is getting through to the right person, by providing intelligent routing and omni-channel, but without changing the shape of the business.

I asked whether there was a naivety in the CCaaS market towards businesses not requiring a full-fat contact centre. There is a tendency for CCaaS providers to go all in on their omni-channel offering and over provide functionality.

Dan referenced a customer they are currently working with who is not buying a CCaaS application. “They are leveraging APIs from our UCaaS product and bringing in some WFO for quality assurance for their 600 agent team. They aren’t logging into an agent desktop but they are delivering the same kind of capabilities to their customers calling in”.

We agreed it was a perfect world without having to go all out with a CCaaS product. Dan said, “For the lower end of the market, in small business, to turn UCaaS into your customer experience strategy is a real challenge and that’s where we come in”.

What tech is in Formation Tech?

I asked what tech was in use to deliver this kind of midway UCaaS/CCaaS approach. Formation Tech uses Avaya Powered by IP Office to integrate APIs into bespoke CRM for functionality like click to dial, call recording and advanced reporting. Formation Tech is a Diamond Cloud Integrator partner of Avaya, which is testament to the speed and size of cloud seats Formation has deployed.

As UCaaS becomes more commoditised, and decision making is no longer as complicated as early day cloud phone systems, Formation Tech has shifted their focus to customer experience, integrations and middleware to drive operational efficiency as part of a UCaaS only deployment.  Then, for customers looking to go further, Formation is able to help them to take advantage of full blown CCaaS solutions too.