If you were not able to attend Interactive Intelligence Interactions 2014 in Indianapolis, you missed more than a bit of excitement. Not only was the annual gathering bigger and better than ever as a place to be immersed in the latest industry innovations and insights, but you also were not in attendance when BidPal, a fundraising technology company that provides mobile auctions, event management solutions, payment processing and online fundraising, was announced as the winner of Interactive Intelligence’s unprecedented Customer Experience Makeover Contest: Contact Center Style.
The contest attracted 84 entries. Contest finalists included LawnSavers and L’Oréal España, in addition to BidPal. And, to the winner are going not the proverbial spoils, but rather an impressive portfolio of what can be properly described as “goodies.”
In this instance, they involve what truly is an extreme makeover of their contact center. Interactive Intelligence is providing a fully-featured cloud-based contact center solution, training and consulting services. In addition, there are sponsor-provided phones from Polycom, headsets from Plantronics, CRM software from Zendesk, gateways from AudioCodes, training from Contact Center Compliance and ICMI, and more.
"We're a high-tech, fast-moving company with a standard call center system and infrastructure," said Rachel Clark, BidPal's vice president of product and technology. "Getting cutting-edge technology so we can resolve customer issues faster means we can help charitable organizations raise more money for their many worthy causes."
BidPal's contact center operates seven days a week and fields as many as 500 calls during busy auction nights.
"We have great people, expertise and commitment," Clark said. "However, to take our business to the next level we need to automate even more processes, improve our performance monitoring and reporting, and be able to collaborate more efficiently as a team.”
"Among other things on our makeover ‘wish list' is the ability to give agents a work-at-home option. Right now the hours can vary dramatically with some agents coming in as early as 6 a.m., and some leaving as late as 3 a.m. Given this variability, it would be great to have contact center technology that supported remote workers," Clark concluded.
The makeover announcement is just the first step in what promises to be an exciting journey for all involved. In fact, Interactive Intelligence is documenting BidPal's contact center makeover with photos, videos, blogs and articles, which will be posted here: www.inin.com/cxmakeover. The makeover is expected to be completed by the end of this year, and if you are like me you will be checking back in periodically on the progress.
"The cool thing about this makeover is that not only do we get to set up a company with a contact center that can really make a difference, but we'll document pre-makeover metrics so other centers can see exactly what made the difference and why," said Tim Passios, vice president of solutions marketing for Interactive Intelligence.
In fact, with contact centers growing in criticality as the frontlines for improving overall customer experience and vital hubs for generating actionable insights for enterprises of all sizes around the world, the ability to see a use case as it is evolving and judge the impact new capabilities will have on operational efficiency and effectiveness is why this makeover is so noteworthy.
Congratulations to BidPal, the other finalists along with all of the entrants. Thanks to the documentation of the makeover the entire contact center community is going to be winners.