Gavin Jones, Channel Director at BT Wholesale and Tony Martino, CEO at Tollring, have teamed up to share the opportunity of call analytics solutions with the channel and provide an overview of how the two companies are working together to support their channel partners.
How and where we work is changing. The past year has demonstrated that flexible and remote working shouldn’t be shied away from. It delivers on business goals while enabling better work-life balance. Research from Adecco reveals that 79% of employees want more flexibility in how they work.
As reported in BT’s recent whitepaper, hybrid working is a huge opportunity for businesses because it removes any geographical limitations, allowing people to collaborate and interact in ways that weren’t perceived as possible before. There’s an entire world of potential customers to sell to and talent to hire on a scale that previously only the largest companies could operate.
This translates into all facets of business, forcing the question of: how can organisations deliver a high standard of customer service and continue to make continuous improvements? Together with the shift to all-IP fast approaching, partners have an important role to play. They need to help businesses understand which solutions are available to help them, to get the best out of their teams across the board.
Where call analytics plays a role
Undoubtedly, one solution to helping maximise the potential of remote workers is call analytics. It provides the clarity that every business needs. With distributed teams, managers benefit from access to data on how they are best serving customers, where the sales opportunities are and which members need more motivation.
A recent report has found that 40% of managers don’t have the right analytics tools to measure success for a remote workforce. What’s more, companies that leverage the most customer data – those in the top 25% of managing data relative to other similar companies – see 36% faster resolutions and a 79% reduction in wait times.
By increasing visibility, businesses can deliver a higher level of customer service, whilst increasing potential business opportunities at the same time. Call analytics provides customers with reassurance, a clear benefit that partners should be communicating when discussing these types of solutions.
This includes utilising solutions, such as iCall Suite by Tollring, provided within BT Wholesale’s Voice and collaboration portfolio - this tool can be added to BT Wholesale’s proprietary cloud solution, Wholesale Hosted Communications (WHC). By combining the flexibility and scalability of WHC with real-time analytics, they are the perfect unified communications package for channel partners.
With the 2025 switch-off on the horizon, there’s both a responsibility and a huge opportunity for the channel in guiding businesses through the journey to an all-IP world. Implementing smart solutions such as iCall Suite by Tollring through BT Wholesale’s WHC platform, customers will be able to deliver excellent customer service throughout.
Proof is in the pudding
With hybrid working, there is a risk that some insight can be lost, and staff can lose motivation. Implementing call analytics solutions optimises decision-making, increases sales opportunities and drives customer satisfaction. This means that businesses can stay ahead of the competition and improve operational efficiency.
One customer that Tollring worked with found that 46.7% of unanswered contacts per year went unresolved, which amounted to losses of £83.8m. After consulting with partners, the customer decided to implement iCall Suite by Tollring and found that the call analytics solution reduced unresolved contacts to less than 10%, earning an additional £60m per year.
Working together to support the channel
BT Wholesale and Tollring have been working together for over five years, with Tollring’s award winning iCall Suite providing comprehensive call reporting and analytics to BT Wholesale’s secure, scalable and flexible WHC platform. The capabilities of iCall Suite by Tollring have continuously evolved, providing value throughout the channel and to BT Wholesale’s partners. Channel partners are supported with sales enablement and customer engagement programmes to drive business growth for the channel and end customers. The BT Wholesale UC Skills platform provides bitesize tutorials, libraries of themed promotional content and interactive sales support material, as well as certification, resources and free demo access for registered partners for sales enablement and product knowledge.
Working collaboratively, BT Wholesale and Tollring ensure these new training programmes will help partners and their customers to benefit from leveraging business-critical call data to drive customer experience.
This article also appeared in Comms Business here
