Case Study: Company Reduces Employee Stress

ABC Home & Commercial Services is a family-owned company that has been serving home and business owners since 1949.

From pest control, to lawn and landscaping work, to pool maintenance and remodelling, ABC’s team of trained specialists provides high-quality services across Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida.

When its on-premises system became too difficult and expensive to scale, ABC moved its contact centre and business communications to 8×8-just before the pandemic.

As a result, the company was able to shift easily to a hybrid work model, reduce employee stress, and spend time participating in 8×8’s beta program for Agent Workspace.

“I appreciate how 8×8 involves customers in new product development and that the company is always looking for feedback.” — Erin Warren, Customer Service Manager, ABC Home & Commercial Services

The Challenge: Improving Scalability and Cost Control

Prior to adopting 8×8, ABC had been running its communications on an on-premises system. At one point, the company realized that its current servers were running out of storage space. ABC would have to either buy new servers (an expensive proposition) or move to the cloud.

The leadership team decided that the cloud was the best approach, both from a maintenance cost perspective as well as easy scalability that would support company growth.

ABC’s IT organization researched cloud-based communications providers, interviewing about ten different contact centre solutions.

“We chose 8×8 because it gave us the most value for the dollar,” says Erin Warren, Customer Service Supervisor at ABC Home & Commercial Services.

“For the monthly costs, we got a very comprehensive package of features and capabilities, including things that we really wanted like speech analytics.”

The Solution: Cloud-Based Platform With Rich Features for Everyone

In 2019, ABC’s IT team implemented 8×8 Contact Center and 8×8 Work at five locations across the company.

The team onboarded contact centre agents and office staff to 8×8, and employees ramped up quickly with very little assistance needed. In 2021, additional locations were added.

“It wasn’t difficult for our agents to learn the new 8×8 system,” recalls Warren. “8×8 is pretty self-explanatory.”

After using 8×8 successfully for a couple of years, ABC learned about an interesting new interface in the works for contact centre agents. 8×8 encourages customers to provide feedback on any aspect of their experience, and one of the best ways to do that is to participate in beta and research programs.

Warren and her customer service team decided to join 8×8’s Agent Workspace Beta Program to gain early access to the new agent interface and have a say in shaping future development.

She explains, “Personally, I think it’s important for us to have input in the tools that we use on a regular basis. And it’s important for companies like 8×8 to understand what their customers need in order to create something that is user friendly for everyone.”

The team enjoyed being part of the beta process and now Agent Workspace is integral to their daily operations. Warren says, “Everyone likes the look of the console—it’s larger, more aesthetically pleasing, and very, very user friendly.”

Organization-wide, many other 8×8 features support daily operations at ABC. The company relies on 8×8’s video conferencing, chat, and email services for internal collaboration, as well as communicating with customers, partners, suppliers, and others.

For Warren, 8×8 reporting and Interaction Analytics are particularly helpful. “As a supervisor, I use reports to gain insight into my team’s performance and service quality. I’m a numbers nerd, so access to this type of data is one of my favourite features of the 8×8 platform.”

The Benefits: Reduced Employee Stress and Happier Customers

Overall, 8×8 has been a successful solution for ABC with no major issues reported. According to Warren, contact centre agents have benefited most from 8×8’s ease of use and improved, intuitive interface, resulting in lower stress levels—a boon for both employees and customers.

“With 8×8, our agents are less stressed out and more comfortable manoeuvring around the phone system,” reports Warren. “This helps them to help our customers much more easily.”

During the pandemic, reducing employee stress was particularly important. “With our on-premises system, it would have been very difficult to work from home,” says Warren. “We were fortunate to have already implemented 8×8 by then.”

For the foreseeable future, ABC plans to operate as a hybrid workforce, with staff coming to the office two days a week and everyone working from home on Fridays. 8×8’s flexibility will continue to support the company as it grows and evolves into the future.

In a final note, Warren shares, “8×8 has been a terrific company to work with and a terrific service provider for us.”

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of 8x8 – View the Original Article

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