The Record - Issue 21: Summer 2021

65 M aking every moment matter is essential in business, particularly when it comes to managing customer interactions. To ensure customer satisfaction, enquiries and complaints must be handled quickly and effi- ciently by knowledgeable employees. However, this has been challenging for many organisa- tions who have transitioned to remote working during the pandemic. Consequently, now is the time for a paradigm shift in the way enterprises manage business communications. “Many enterprises are struggling to handle an ever-increasing number of calls, so they’re look- ing for ways to enhance capacity and productiv- ity,” says Gijs Geurts, CEO of Anywhere365. “The most popular solution is to grow the workforce, but this isn’t sustainable long term. It increases budget requirements, and it won’t enhance the customer experience, productivity or profitability.” Instead, Geurts advises organisations to reduce unnecessary dialogues and manage communications in the same precise way as supply chain processes. “A business dealing with perishable products must streamline its supply chain and meticu- lously plan logistics to eliminate waste and max- imise profit, but what if the perishable product for every enterprise was time itself ?” he asks. “How can enterprises optimally manage time, while thinking of it as both their most valuable and least renewable asset? Every minute must count for both customers and the business.” To achieve this, enterprises should build a ‘warehouse of time’ to give their existing contact centre and help desk teams sufficient ‘breathing space’ to manage customer dialogues efficiently. “By managing time for customer dialogues in the same way as a warehouse of goods, enterprises can overcome capacity planning issues and increase employee productivity, allowing them to deliver unparalleled service experiences that enhance customer loyalty and profitability,” explains Geurts. To achieve this, businesses need to implement technologies that enable human agents, artifi- cial intelligence (AI) bots and the internet of things to work together to help the customer. “Anywhere365 has proven with many global customers that the most effective way to improve enterprise communications is to build intelligence into dialogues. It starts with all your available data,” says Geurts. “To make an impact on their warehouse of time, businesses must deploy an intuitive communications and collaboration platform, such as Microsoft Teams, and integrate it with customer relation- ship management and other data systems.” Anywhere365’s Dialogue Cloud solution, for example, directs routine customer requests to AI chatbots or voice bots but transfers complex dialogues to humans. “Customer experiences don’t always begin or end in the contact centre, so it also tracks dialogues to ensure companies provide a consistently high level of service,” says Geurts. Gijs Geurts of Anywhere365 explains why enterprises need to transform the way they manage business communications Every minute counts BY R E B E CCA G I B SON I NT E R V I EW