Contact Center Resources: Get to Know the Five9 Cloud

Today’s customers are more demanding than ever and they want to engage with a brand how and when on their own terms. This means that for businesses to succeed they need to step up their digital engagement strategies.

COVID threw the world for a loop. Thousands of folks have been forced into remote work. It can be hard and not everybody is built for it. But if you’ve been forced into remote work, how can you get the most out of it?

This is normally the time of year that the halls at Five9 are packed with our summer interns. And while a lot of other companies have done away with the summer intern program all together, here at Five9, we couldn’t possibly just not have our summer interns.

Show of hands if you were booked to attend a conference this year that either canceled, or moved virtual?

Would you rather spend $1,000 on a laptop and 15 minutes on the phone with a rep or spend $800 on the same laptop but 5 hours on the phone getting passed from rep to rep?

Walt Rossi, Five9VP of Business Development, knows that it’s easy to say you’re in a working agreement with another company, but to combine your products into a solution that actually works for the customer is a whole other ballgame.

Are you still working from home? Before COVID-19 swept across the United States, less than 20% of contact center agents were being supported by a cloud-based solution. Those 20% had an easy time making the switch to a WFH model.

The gig economy is really intriguing to me. Being able to turn work on and off at my leisure. Working when I feel the most creative or productive. One positive thing about the pandemic is that it’s accelerated telecommunication solutions - making it possible for many people to work when they weren’t able to before.

I don’t know what I’d do if my company wasn’t based in the cloud. I’m not even sure if I’d still have a job. I can tell you now that the cloud has quite literally saved companies from going under during this pandemic.

It’s a little creepy when I consider how much information different companies have on me. But, when an agent from one of those companies uses the provided info to craft a unique experience for me… I have to admit it’s kind of nice.

For a lot of people, work from home sounds like a dream. Roll out of bed, put on slippers, grab the coffee and the laptop and just sit in sweats on the couch all day? Who wouldn’t want that?

The last time we had Anand Chandrasekaran on the That’s Genius! Podcast, he had been with Five9 for just over 100 days. Now, he’s closing in on his first year.

Once upon a time, the customer contact center was simple. It was about three things:

Back in December, Zoom had 10 million active users. In March, when they launched their Master Agent program? They had 300 million. In 3 months, they ended up with 30 times as many users as they had before Christmas.

“Okay, but our contact center is getting the job done as we are. Why should we consider migrating it to the cloud?” It’s a fair question.

How do you transition more than 100,000 contact center agents to a work from home setup? And, do it without sacrificing the customer experience?

In all of the uncertainty of 2008, one company found their solution to cutting costs. A remote workforce. Poly has been perfecting this new normal for over a decade now.

Imagine playing in a basketball game with no scoreboard, no clock. Maybe you’d work really hard at first to beat the other team, but there’s no way of knowing how your hard work is paying off. You know you’ve made some baskets… but how many? How much time is left? Are you even winning? Are your plays working?

Agility in the workplace is needed now more than ever. In a time of so many employees working from home, the benefits of the cloud are undeniable.

Customer service has come a long way. It used to be that if a customer needed help, they had to either make a phone call, or come into your physical building. Customers are leery of coming into contact with anybody if they don’t have to.

Are you working on initiatives to make sure that you’re accessible and easy to do business with? Jake Butterbaugh says if you meet these three needs, you’ll be well on your way to delivering great customer service.

Lies or truths? 1.) “Work and fun don’t mix.” 2.) “Call center agents should be miserable.” 3.) “On-prem is more reliable than the cloud.”

There’s been a resurgence in the focus on CX in recent years. A lot of businesses contribute it to millennials. But, in reality, good CX transcends generations. Turns out, everybody wants a better customer journey.

How many nights a year do you stay in a hotel? For a lot of us, not many. For Nick Delis, who was a guest on the That’s Genius! podcast recently, the answer is over 150 nights. Half the year.

The contact center is the front door to every eCommerce business. And, you typically only get one chance to answer that door with a fantastic experience or risk losing that customer for good.

It’s a common frustration for any customer who just can’t seem to make their way through an outdated maze of AI to reach a real human for help.

One bad experience. That’s all it takes to lose the loyalty of the modern buyer. And, unfortunately, most of those bad experiences can be directly linked to a lousy customer service encounter.

Let’s quit resisting AI, and embrace it for what it really is. Not a replacement, but a reinforcement.

You know when you start a new job and you get a learning period? That time where you soak in knowledge and just sort of figure out what is going on? Anand Chandrasekaran didn’t get that.

While it’s true that AI is developing rapidly, maybe, just maybe, our fears about the irrelevance of humanity are just a bit to premature?

Once upon a time, people worried that ATMs would eliminate the need for human tellers. Well, there are still like 300,000 bank tellers today. So, why do people worry that AIs are going to eliminate call centers?

Everyone’s got that buzz-term that they’re sick of. That they’d be fine if they never heard again. On a recent episode of the That’s Genius! podcast, Brian Atkinson talked about his role in the EMEA marketplace, partner ecosystems, and shared his least favorite buzz term. What was it?

With our modern on-demand mentality, it’s sometimes difficult for travel websites or apps to give us exactly what we want. As travel service providers, we want to customize the user’s experience as much as possible, but also keep the cost down.

Latin American countries tend to be 4 or 5 years behind developed regions in adopting new technology. Nonetheless, there is a growing interest in improving customer experience through cloud services. Raphael Spinelli, CEO of Optimi Solutions, fills us in on the current landscape of cloud tech in Latin American countries.

What exactly is customer advocacy? It can be a little difficult to define.

“What was true six months ago, is no longer true today.” Isn’t that the truth. Modern marketers can no longer depend on specializing in one discipline. You have to understand every touchpoint in the customer’s journey to be really successful.

What’s your most standout “customer experience” experience? Maybe you think of a fantastic interaction you had with a company. One where they went above and beyond. But more than likely, you think of a time when you were drug over the coals. Given the runaround.

Deep in the trenches of getting their degrees, and ready to prove themselves, today’s interns run the gamut when it comes to backgrounds and roles. While I can’t speak to what intern life is like at Dunder Mifflin, or any other company, our most recent episode of the That’s Genius! podcast features 3 of our summer interns.

What’s the #1 reason why you haven’t moved to the cloud? It’s different? It’s scary? It’s a lot of work?

Join us for Pt. 3 of our conversation with Five9 CEO, Rowan Trollope, and Five9 CTO and Head of AI, Jonathan Rosenberg, on That's Genius.

A contact center agent that has these two superpowers: They know all the answers AND don’t have to do any typing.

Rowan Trollope, our CEO at Five9, and Jonathan Rosenberg, CTO and Head of AI, came on this week’s episode of That’s Genius!, and here’s what they said: Think about how you can strategically place AI to be helpful instead of just inaccurate.

Check out more of Rowan Trollope's thoughts on the intersection of AI and humans in contact centers by listening to the latest episode of That’s Genius!

Consider a retailer, like Nordstrom. They'll let you return an item, no questions asked. That level of customer experience is pretty unique.

Contact centers are a wealth of data. But unfortunately, they're not always utilized that way. And more importantly, those insights are rarely used to deliver a great customer experience.

The contact center is set to change more in the next 5 years than in the past 25. Are you prepared for that?

Company culture. You’ve probably already seen that topic in your feed today. Here’s the deal: Company culture isn’t a philosophy. It’s an activity.

On today’s episode of That’s Genius! podcast, Michael Rose continues his interview with Five9 CEO, Rowan Trollope, as they discuss what the future holds for the contact center in an increasingly automated world.