For more than two decades, West UC has been a leader in cloud-based and hosted solutions for communications. With what might be the industry’s broadest stack of enterprise-grade UCaaS solutions, West enables communication with customers, collaboration among employees and connectivity to emergency assistance, and the company is committed to one straightforward goal: making communication easier for everyone.
West has been through some significant changes since the last time we spoke, so I thought it was about time I sat down with Enda Kenneally, the VP of EMEA UCaaS sales, and learned a little more about West’s expanded product portfolio in the EMEA region and how the business is working to continuously evolve and enhance its offering to keep pace with changing customer needs. .
Unified and Complete Communications Solutions from West
The first thing that Enda told me was that over the last year, West has been hyper focused on integration. Many will know West as a provider of InterCall conferencing solutions, others know West as a leader in hosted voice and networking solutions, still others recognise West as a provider of IVR tools and contact centre solutions. And they’d all be correct – West does provide all of these services, and many more that place the company at the heart of digital engagement. As a company that enables digital transformation for its customers it’s no surprise that West is currently undergoing a transformation of its own.
“The scope and range of solutions that West provides is much broader than many realise – we truly do cover everything for our customers, and to accommodate a future of digital transformation (DX), we’ve placed integration and simplification among our top priorities over the past year,” said Kenneally.
“We’ve created new structures within our organisation to drive better alignment across our teams, giving our customers broader and more straightforward access to our solutions and services. And through this process, we’ve managed to expand the range of customer experience solutions available to the EMEA region.”
West’s expanded customer experience solutions in EMEA include intuitive voice and self-service solutions, proactive notifications and mobility, expanded cloud contact centre capabilities and CX design and methodology services.
“It all comes down to delivering a better experience for our customers and in turn, helping them to provide a better experience for their customers. Through our expanded portfolio we feel that we are better equipped to help customers adapt to changing business conditions, handle omnichannel engagement and connect it all to their UC tools and services.”
West’s Approach to Unified Communications as a Service
In terms of Unified Communications as a Service, West’s approach is to provide their customers with choices backed by the expertise to help them navigate through the selection and deployment process. Many of West’s solutions represent their own proprietary tools while others come from Cisco, Microsoft and other leading technology firms.
“Our goal is to give our customers a range of options so that they can select the best combination of tools to meet their current and future needs.”
“A one-size-fits-all approach has never been part of our strategy and we never like to assume that one particular solution is the best to meet every customers’ needs.”
“Customers turn to us because we have deep expertise weaving together multiple solutions and deploying in highly complex environments.”
West sets their UCaaS system apart not only by offering their customers choices, but by employing a structured migration mindset and by helping customers maximise their existing investments in legacy systems and environments as they deploy and adopt new technologies.
“West is always keen to prioritise a more structured cloud migration model. We are equipped to scale and grow with our customers as they begin to move more of their applications to a hosted environment and we find that this approach allows us to be more nimble while still giving a full wrap end-to-end solution with management, dedicated SLAs and more.”
West’s Contact Centre Solutions
When it comes to offering contact centre services, West is driven by the needs of their customers. While many organisations claim to be customer-centric, most will focus on selling a distinct solution from a specific vendor. However, West’s position as a company with multiple solutions to offer means that they can let the customer’s needs dictate the right solution. This can even mean helping clients to maintain their investment if they have an existing contact centre in place.
For businesses looking to replace their contact centre, West examines the needs of the organisation and determines the best offering in their portfolio for that brand’s needs. “We are positioned to allow our customers to take a step back and look holistically at their needs.”
“We have contact centre solutions in our global portfolio that can accommodate contact centres from one agent all the way up to enterprise level and we also provide add-on services that can be combined with any contact centre solution – even if it is not from West.”
West understands that consumers are increasingly demanding a convenient and frictionless experience, and for businesses to meet customer needs, services and support need to be delivered seamlessly over multiple channels. To help customers understand how mature their organisation really is when it comes to customer experience, West offers an online CX assessment that helps to identify where the organisation falls on the Customer Experience Lifecycle Management Maturity Model as well as where they want to be in the future.
“Customer journey mapping is a crucial component of how we work with customers to help them realise digital transformation strategies and steal a march over their competitors. With our expanded IVR offerings and through things like proactive notifications we can help businesses meet their customers when and where they want to communicate, staying a step ahead of their needs.”
Enda told me that where West believes they deliver the most exceptional value and capabilities to the customer is through the provision of their own West managed and serviced IVR. With West’s hosted IVR, companies can make sure that their customers are sent to the right place at the right time when they need to talk to an agent. West even allows 24/7/365 service for callers, so that the IVR can take orders even when agents aren’t available.
“We offer real contextual automation at the front end of any environment, and that’s something that really sets our customer experience offerings apart. We’ve got so much back-end information and organisation that we can provide real context to a business discussion.”
“We’re not just working towards disruptive technology. These are the things that we already have immersed in our system – and that our customers are using to accelerate and improve their company’s performance.”
