When Will Telecom Innovation Breach the Call Center Silo? Shai Berger, Founder and CEO Fonolo Presented at TADSummit 2016, 15-16 Nov, Lisbon in Stream 4, Contextual Comms, Conversational CRM, BOTs, reviews the practical impact of the changes happening to communications. Messaging and IP Communications as a Platform providers are diversifying the options for communications, and how businesses communicate with their customers. We are only at the early stages of this change, however, multi-channel communications, session management, automation (BOTs) and real-time analytics are delivering business results today. Attendees can learn from leading implementers where to focus efforts, and not get taken-in my the weak-minded marketing BS plaguing in this space. The call center is the most siloed part of enterprise software. Many bold visions for the future of customer service have run aground underestimating this stubborn reality. Reviewing Fonolo’s journey to bring “over the top” innovation to the call center world is great way to understand this challenge.

1. Shai Berger
CEO, Fonolo
@shaiberger
When Will Telecom
Innovation
Breach the
Call Center Silo?

2. Call centers “sat out” the voice
revolution of 2005-2015

3. 2005: “Voice 2.0”
And the “grown-up” version, CEBP
(comm enabled biz processes)
+ low-cost termination =

4. 2010: CPaaS
owned by part of part of
IPO
part of
?
Vonage

5. Why are call centers unfriendly to
innovation?

6. In no particular order:
• Technical difficulty
• Mission critical nature
• Historical vendor culture
• Indirect sales/service model
• Outsourcing

7. Result:
The call center experience remains
largely stuck in the past… and
people HATE IT.

8. Source: Consumer Reports
What Customer Service Problems
Cause the Most Frustration?
Scale 0-10, with 10 being the most annoying.

9. say “just ONE unpleasant
contact center experience is
likely to make me take my
business elsewhere.”
Source: YouGov
76%

10. Tweet Venting!
Source: onholdwith.com

12. “Cloud” Will Save Us, Right?

13. Not really.
Source: CCIQ’s 2016 Executive Contact Center Report.

14. More importantly…
Not all cloud is “cloud”
And…
cloud does not mean open.

15. Maybe smartphones will save us?

16. call center smartphone
But how do you connect these two
islands?

17. Sadly this is the most common answer

18. Maybe WebRTC will save us?

20. Amazon Mayday
One touch access to live agent conversation with 1-way video.
Lots of attention from the press.
But! Amazon is in a unique position:
1. Total control over: Device hardware, platform & network.
2. Nearly unlimited budget.

21. WebRTC has had minimal
impact on call centers*
Added failure
points
Advantages?
* From a customer-facing perspective

22. Isn’t voice declining as a channel
anyway?

23. In some ways, yes
Source: Dimension Data
Non-voice channels are account for 35% of all interactions today
and will overtake voice by 2018.

24. In some ways, no
Source: Contact Babel

25. Beware of analysts (and vendors) talking
about percentage of “interactions”
happening over channel “X”.

26. There is no agreed-upon way to count
“interactions”.

27. Some cold water…
People employed as
“Customer Service Representatives”

28. Some amazing innovation is
happening…

32. Sadly limited to top sliver of companies
These are “one-off” projects that
take significant resources.
Not scalable to the (very) long tale
of call centers.

33. fonolo.com/blog
linkedin.com/company/fonolo
facebook.com/fonolo
sales@fonolo.com
@shaiberger
@fonolo