Today, there are few things more important than customer experience. Businesses everywhere are beginning to discover that if they can’t make sure that their clients are getting the right, most memorable moments from interacting with their brand, then they’re going to fall behind the competition.
Since it started in 1998, Sabio has been dedicated to helping businesses across the world improve their customer service solutions and design a better end-to-end journey with clients. Through innovative services, and a strong relationship with Avaya, the company has seen significant success. I sat down with Russell Sheldon, the Chief Commercial Officer of Sabio, to find out more.
Tell Us About Yourself, and Sabio
Russell told me that he joined Sabio at the beginning of January this year, to take on the role of Chief Commercial Officer. Before he began working with Sabio, Russell spent five years working for one of the leading HR outsourcing and technology services organisations. “Before that, I spent a couple of years in the legal outsourcing field, and before that, I was in HR outsourcing again.”
Sabio has maintained the same focus on delivering services for better customer experience since day one. Sheldon noted that the business has always been focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences, and deploying, designing and managing solutions that help their clients to differentiate themselves.
“We’ve also gone through some significant change since our investment in 2016, which gave us a solid foundation on which to start a lot of organic growth. We’ve made 3 acquisitions now, both to support better analytics and insight functions, and to help us spread further across Europe.”
Do You Operate Mainly in the Enterprise Space?
Sabio is currently the leading specialist in contact centre technology – providing exceptional customer service solutions and services. They seem to have a strong footprint in the enterprise space, with contracts with some leading brands like DHL, Sainsbury’s Argos, and even P&O Cruises. I asked Russell if the company’s focus was largely enterprise, or whether they served elsewhere too.
“I think if you look back over many years it’s safe to say that our focus has been typically in the enterprise space. However, we’ve always supported mid-market customers too. We’ve currently got 250 customers that we support over 60 countries, and those customers range all the way from the very large enterprise to mid-market brands. We’re very comfortable moving between those two spaces.”
Tell Us About Sabio’s Relationship with Avaya
I was interested to find out why Sabio chose Avaya as the solution to help them deliver their customer service experiences to customers around the world. The relationship that Sabio has with Avaya is clearly a deep one, as the business was recently awarded the “diamond” standard Oceana expert certification.
“We’ve had a long-standing relationship with Avaya, achieving their highest level of partner accreditation for about 15 years now. Avaya has always been one of the leading technology partners out there, and we’ve stayed close by them throughout the years.”
“We’ve been very fortunate to win a lot of awards, such as the 2017 contact centre of the year award in the UK and the 2017 project of the year award too. We were also the first EMEA and APAC partner to get the Avaya Oceana accreditation, and we’re very proud of that.”
Sabio has stood by Avaya through all of their difficult periods to form a very deep end-to-end relationship. The company also recently signed Journeycall – another Avaya customer, in a £1.6 million contract deal. “Journeycall made a significant investment in an on-demand Avaya hosted contact centre platform. It’s UC as a Service (UCaaS), with comprehensive voice, automated IVR, and WebRTC. We’re really happy to support them as they go through this transformation and provide them with a platform that they can innovate on in the future too.”
What Are You Seeing in Digital Transformation?
Clearly, with customer experience as their main focus, Sabio has seen a lot of interest in the worlds of digital transformation (DX) and the move to the cloud. Russell told me that the business has been moving a lot of clients towards cloud-based models, as companies focus on embracing a more flexible and scalable solution for digital transformation. “I don’t know of an organisation that’s not already working on key initiatives in that area. Organisations are very much looking at how they can get the CX outcomes they need as a service, and that’s something we can offer.”
Russell also noted that Sabio has seen significant interest and growth in the area of virtual assistants, and how they can help with supporting better customer interactions and contact centre solutions. “Because we’re working with Avaya and Oceana, we can offer a lot of omnichannel services as part of the digital transformation journey. However, we’re also looking beyond that to help organisations get value from the data they collect too, from information about customer preferences to insights into employee satisfaction.”
How Does Avaya Work with You to Support the Move to the Cloud?
With Avaya so deeply integrated into their service offering, I was interested to find out how the company was helping Sabio to serve its customers in the move to the cloud. Russell told me that he believes the Avaya platform is world-class, and that their telephony infrastructure is exceptional.
“We’ve worked with Avaya over many years to find ways to provision those things in multiple different ways. Now, they have commercial models that allow customers to take advantage of the growth in the cloud too. On top of that, their investment into omnichannel capability just adds to that innovation roadmap for clients in a cloud setting.”
Sheldon noted that it’s always been a part of the Avaya strategy to make sure that clients are accessing the right platforms to help them take advantage of the areas they want to explore next.
How Is the Loyalty2gether Campaign Supporting You?
Sabio is one of the companies involved in the Avaya Loyalty2gether program – an upgrade program that allows customers to enjoy a more accelerated digital transformation journey. Russell told me that the program has allowed Sabio to achieve an even better working relationship with clients.
“Avaya is working closely with us to find opportunities and support us from both a commercial and innovation perspective. We’re here to help organisations continue to innovate and transform to help their customers, and Avaya has really been at the heart of that. The program has given us a chance to look at how we engage with different clients, and bring solutions together to boost those investments, and launch innovations.”
Through the Avaya migrate and modernise campaign, Sabio has been able to assist both pre-existing clients with proactive transformation strategies, and new clients too.
“In both cases, clients are looking for companies that understand them and know how to help them stay competitive in the years ahead. With Avaya, we can continue to ensure that our clients deliver market-leading customer experience.”
Avaya’s Loyalty2gether program was launched in March 2018. It aims at helping customers who run Avaya and other brands, to upgrade to new Unified Communications and Contact Centre platforms in a flexible, efficient manner quickly. Avaya’s millions of UC and CC customers, under this program, will be able to seed innovation in their businesses with flexibility and speed. Avaya has taken the Loyalty2Gether to thousands of its partners worldwide.
