Resources from Unified Communications

Customer Experience & Revenues Jeopardized By Calls Not Connecting

By Special Guest
Stephen Levenson, Vice President , GTT

In the current economic climate, global companies are increasingly turning to Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) solutions to drive collaboration among customers, colleagues, and partners. This technology is an important tool for driving time to market and revenue streams. 

According to a Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) report, Meetings Around the World: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration, 71 percent of Fortune 500 companies said they use UC solutions to cut the need for business travel. The same report also found that more than half of those responding think UC solutions present a powerful alternative to in-person office visits. 

Companies requiring UC entrust their mission critical worldwide telecommunications to one of a few global companies. There are a plethora of complex issues looming for any company that relies on worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platform installations. These issues negatively impact customer retention, customer service, sales, reservations, corporate image, and revenue. Avoiding them at all costs is essential.

Setting up global sales and customer service telephone numbers and IVR platforms is complicated and costly. They are the business’s life lines for customers and employees. Being 100 percent sure that they are operational is imperative.

A 1^st Financial Training Services survey reported that 96 percent of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91 percent of those will simply leave and never come back. A Garter Survey showed 85 percent of customers are dissatisfied with their telecommunications experience with 92 percent of all customer interactions occurring via telephone. 

When new worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are delivered to global businesses, they are tested randomly, at best, by the provider, or their local in-country telco partner. However, they are not verifying all numbers being delivered, and the testing is rudimentary. These companies solely and sporadically test electronically, which permits problematic and/or non-functioning numbers and IVR platforms to be delivered to customers. This testing cannot detect ANY in-country call quality or Quality Of Service (QoS) issues, and most importantly, does not simulate the in-country user experience.

It is because of the flawed limited relationships between worldwide UC companies and their in-country local telco partners that global companies are losing clients and compromising sales because their newly delivered worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are faulty. Customers calling to inquire about and/or purchase services, products, and make reservations cannot due to problematic telephone numbers and IVR platforms. The time and money spent to fix faulty worldwide telecommunications is costly and frustrating, but more importantly, negatively affects how a company is perceived in the marketplace, customer experience, and retention.

It is imperative for customer experience, retention, and revenues to simulate the in-country user experience (by in-country quality assurance testing) before delivery to global businesses. This ensures that all worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are functioning properly.

According to Global Telecom Testing’s 2015 Pass/Fail Report of Worldwide Telephone Numbers, more than 33 percent of worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms tested are non-operational  upon delivery to global businesses, even though the UC company and/or their local in-country telco partner have stated otherwise. The risk of relying on these companies to ensure that worldwide telecommunications are operational is much like playing Russian Roulette with your business’ lifelines.

For global companies whose day-to-day business operations depends on successful customer experiences and worldwide collaboration (conferencing, calls, faxes, etc.), it is imperative that their worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are fully operational, and can deliver consistent robust, and positive results. Completed calls and the in-country caller experience needs to be the priority; not the cost of testing - you get what you pay for. However, completed calls and the customer experience clearly isn’t their priority.

The first step to fixing problems is discovering them. In order to 100 percent verify that worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are operational in any worldwide city, in-country, live landline and mobile test calls must be performed in those cities/locations. This type of testing identifies problems before customers and employees begin using the numbers and IVR platforms, which ensures businesses are successful.

In-country live testing not only locates any non-operational worldwide telephone numbers, but also ensures that they are problem-free, the message is correct, language and dialect is correct, voice and DTMF prompts are working, and that IVR platforms are functioning properly. The reliability of worldwide telephone numbers and IVR platforms are enhanced which in turn drives customer satisfaction, and retention.

In-country live test calls are the most important testing benchmarks because only this type of testing accurately simulates the in-country user experience by detecting call failures, call quality, IVR platform installation errors, and QoS issues. 

Worldwide in-Country testing performed by human testers guarantees accuracy at a level that cannot be achieved through computerized and/or electronic testing.

Stephen Levenson is the Vice President of Global Telecom Testing, LLC (GTT), which was founded in 2007 specifically to address the lack of worldwide in-country live telephone number and IVR platform quality assurance testing for global companies. Stephen’s bold global vision coupled with a diverse set of skills drives GTT’s next generation IT and engineering in order to constantly expand their worldwide footprint and testing services supported.    More on Global Telecom Testing