BT this week announced a new era in its partnership with ServiceNow, the leading digital workflow company that makes the world work better for everyone, with plans to launch a turnkey, contact-centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) package integrating digital workflows, global communications and a cloud-hosted contact centre platform.

It is being developed in response to demand from customers to simplify and accelerate digitalisation of their contact centres and workflows.

Digitalisation, including the move of contact centre systems into the cloud, offers more flexible and responsive user experiences for both customers and agents.

It also helps reduce costs, boost productivity and enables new service innovations and compliance tools. 

It will be delivered and managed by BT and ServiceNow to help customers create fully digital, comms-enabled workflows without having to engage multiple partners.

It combines ServiceNow’s powerful Now Platform capabilities with BT’s Global Voice network, integrated into a choice of tools, such as call recording, and a leading CCaaS platform.

The partners have already deployed this with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with the support of the United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC).

They will now offer it to organisations around the world, including domestic business and public sector customers in the UK.

It marks the latest step in the BT and ServiceNow ongoing partnership. Announced in 2022, the collaboration will allow ServiceNow to partner with BT Group’s Digital unit to modernise service management Group-wide. This will help BT Group create an AI-powered, self-healing digital infrastructure for its business operations.

“Integrating comms into the workflow and case management simplifies compliance processes, makes colleagues more efficient and gives a better experience to everyone,” said Andrew Small, director of voice and digital work, Business, BT. “Our new package in partnership with ServiceNow will create a compelling pathway for customers looking to move to the cloud and achieve all the benefits digital transformation has to offer.”

Chris Bedi, chief digital information officer, ServiceNow, added:

“Customers are increasingly looking for turnkey options to remove complexity from cloud migration and workflows. The combination of our cloud‑based platform, with BT’s global network and communication expertise, will offer customers a unique opportunity to digitise and unify their organisations to be smarter and faster.”

In fact, a study from global analytics and advice firm Gallup confirms the strong link between high employee engagement and better business outcomes – across industry and company size – whether in good economic times or bad.

“The contact centre has become instrumental in its contribution to improving the overall experience of customers – both external and internal – to an organisation,” says Shawn Gradwell, Solutions Architect at eNetworks, a Datacentrix company. “And cloud technologies are delivering significant value in this area, specifically for internal customers, by helping to improve employee engagement levels through improved collaboration between team members, important for social interaction and team cohesion.

1. The right tools

Cloud-based contact centre technologies are helping to improve employee engagement in several ways. “Having the right tools in place is an important consideration for better employee engagement,” Gradwell explains. “Cloud solutions can capacitate contact centre employees by allowing them to work effectively from home or from anywhere, maintaining their status as part of the team and keeping them engaged by using technology systems they are motivated to operate.”

2. User friendly interface and workflow automation

Next-generation cloud-based contact centre services create efficiencies that support employees in their work by delivering the service in an easy to use and understandable application that is available on their computers or mobile phones.

Customised workflows can be integrated automatically into existing ERP, CRM and ITSM systems, thereby reducing duplication, manual tasks and errors.

3. Reliable, real-time information

“Another key consideration is the fact that the analytical power and speed of the cloud is unparalleled and has increased the depth of the reporting and visibility across contact centre services. Not only does this empower employees, but real-time statistics bring about greater accountability to the team. Reliable data improves and opens communication in teams, which enhances teamwork and builds trust.”

4. Access to data-driven insights and trends

“Furthermore, cloud technologies deliver live data feeds and complete data-driven insights, enabling management to adapt their business strategies based on trends identified. This also provides managers with an opportunity to stay on top of their teams’ performance and to identify areas for improvement.”

5. Employee coaching

Gradwell goes on to advise that cloud technologies allow for employee coaching opportunities too. “Artificial intelligence (AI) generates a sentiment score on calls made to the service desk. The nature of customer comments in phone calls, text messages, emails, and chat sessions can be properly assessed and used as coaching opportunities for staff to be better kitted to handle various service call situations. Recordings are kept and transcribed automatically to support training initiatives.”

6. Tailored mentoring and recognition

“Supervisors can also provide tailored mentoring to individuals when analysing and comparing scores against the floor’s average. These scores mean that supervisors are more geared to recognise employee performance and express staff appreciation more regularly.”

7. Improved management

Modern cloud contact centre technologies offer users an easy-to-use, intuitive, experience-focused user interface that enables managers and supervisors to change call flows, routing and configuring text-to-speech IVR messages quickly and immediately, without any intervention from IT support or delays while a ticket is queued to an engineer. This permits supervisors to take decisions quickly to improve the performance of the team in each unique situation.

“Consistent employee engagement improves the physical and mental wellbeing of employees,” Gradwell continues. “A well implemented cloud contact centre solution supports employee wellbeing by allowing team leaders to engage more regularly and more meaningfully with employees, from addressing concerns timeously, through changing behaviour, to recognising and rewarding employee performance and more.”