“Globalization” is everywhere in the modern business landscape. The rise of digital technologies is breaking down the barriers between geographical locations, allowing organizations to rapidly expand into new markets and landscapes. However, when businesses “go global”, their customers and employees still expect a “localized” experience.
Teams still need to access technology tailored to their specific needs, and adhere to regulatory requirements unique to their location. Customers still want to feel as though they’re interacting with local employees when they contact a global contact center.
So how do you expand on a massive scale with your telephony solution, while still delivering a local experience? Here are our top tips for success.
Start with a Flexible Cloud Platform
The first thing you’re going to need to create a “global” telephony presence, while retaining a “local” feel, is a flexible cloud platform. An innovative solution provider should give you the freedom to customize your cloud landscape, to suit your specific needs in each region you serve.
The ideal offering will ensure you can combine multiple collaboration platforms, CX (contact center) solutions, and essential applications in one unified workspace. This will give your employees a consistent experience, and access to the same shared data, regardless of where they work.
Since your needs can vary from one environment to the next, the right cloud vendor should be completely agnostic, and capable of integrating PSTN services, SIP trunking solutions and even virtual WAN systems into your ecosystem.
For instance, ULAP’s Smart Exchange offering hosted on the ULAP “Smart Cloud Network” gives companies the freedom to connect all of their global office applications, broadband services, and SaaS partners in one environment. The fully-managed end-to-end solution includes secure gateways worldwide, allowing companies to grow and scale with minimal effort.
Leverage Local DID (Direct Inward Dialling)
Once you have your flexible cloud telephony platform in place, the next step is creating a personalized, “local” experience for every audience segment you serve. Integrations with the right contact center solutions in your ecosystem can help with this.
They ensure you can serve customers on the channels they prefer (wherever they are), collect insights into buyer journeys, and find ways to improve satisfaction rates. However, it’s also worth looking at solutions like “Local DID (Direct Inward Dialling)”.
This will allow you to retain local numbers in different regions, while still ensuring employees can use the CX and collaboration platforms they prefer, from Zoom to Microsoft Teams. Companies like ULAP simplify the process of allowing companies to leverage local numbers, without compromising on employee experience and productivity.
Dominic McDonald, ULAP’s Chief Executive, comments:
“Navigating local DIDs in global systems isn’t just about integration but aligning with diverse global regulations. And when an enterprise has multiple global sites, it can get increasingly complex. It’s a necessary challenge for CX, because customers are more trusting of numbers that they actually recognize.
We form strategic partnerships with major cloud vendors and regional entities to address this exact issue.”
The brand has a global portfolio and network coverage in more than 113 countries, offering regionally-compliant cloud telephony services, and ensuring businesses can retain a “local” presence, wherever they operate.
Prioritize Centralized Visibility and Management
As your business evolves and grows across different regions, centralized visibility is crucial to ensuring you can optimize performance, minimize risks, and improve experiences. Once again, a centralized cloud-native data platform will help with this.
With a comprehensive and aligned data ecosystem, companies can maintain visibility into essential metrics and information across all of the applications and resources employees use worldwide. You can monitor critical call performance and quality metrics, access insights into performance and customer experience opportunities, and even mitigate risks.
A leading cloud-native solution will even give you built-in analytical and reporting tools, to ensure you maintain a real-time view of your ecosystem. They can allow you to set up automated real-time alerts and notifications for critical thresholds, and give you the freedom to manage every instance of your telephony ecosystem from one environment.
What’s more, the right vendor will allow you to use your insights to make rapid, informed changes to your ecosystem. This means you can switch between different vendors and carriers with ease, add new connections, and update your services as you grow.
Plus, you can even use your data with solutions like ULAP’s Smart Cloud Network, to implement automated routing policies that optimize your bandwidth usage, and preserve call quality.
Optimize Regional Data Compliance
Compliance isn’t just essential in business environments to avoid regulatory issues and fines. It’s also a critical part of delivering an exceptional and consistent customer experience. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to stay on top of your compliance requirements as you expand into new regions.
Different countries and geographies have their own guidelines in place for how information should be managed, shared, and stored. Working with a vendor that supports regional data residency and sovereignty solutions can help you to mitigate a variety of risks.
Work with a cloud vendor that builds their ecosystem with a security-first approach, giving you the control you need to implement distinct policies for each region you serve. Ensure you have comprehensive solutions for access controls too, guaranteeing that only authorized team members can access the data they need to serve and support customers.
A leading solution like ULAP’s data platform will even allow companies to build their own unique workspaces for each region they serve, unifying teams, while reducing data leakage risks.
Prepare to Adapt Quickly to Changing Trends
Finally, delivering an exceptional local experience to customers requires a commitment to ongoing optimization and agility. As consumer preferences and compliance standards change over time, you need to be able to adapt your strategy accordingly.
Look for a solution provider who not only gives you the resources you need to adapt and scale your operations with ease, but also provides the insights you need to make the right decisions. A cloud platform with built-in analytical and reporting tools will help you to track changing customer preferences, and make intelligent changes to your strategy.
At the same time, ensure your cloud vendor can support you through the process of implementing new solutions and technologies. For instance, ULAP’s cloud IT professionals can assist companies with integrating new applications into their ecosystem.
Expand Globally, But Think Locally
“Effective global cloud telephony lies in the balance between local presence and global management. Offering local numbers for the appropriate locale is not just a technical necessity; it’s a vital aspect of business’ CX operations,” says Dominic. “Businesses can present a local face to customers, fostering trust and accessibility while leveraging the efficiency and oversight of a unified cloud telephony system. Our approach of partnering with top-tier cloud solutions providers and forming relationships with local jurisdiction entities becomes crucial in global cloud strategy.”
A global expansion is an exciting opportunity for any business. However, as you extend your organization into new markets, it’s crucial to ensure you’re not overlooking the importance of a “local touch”. No matter how large your company grows, ensure you can build stronger relationships with customers, preserve compliance, and maintain your competitive edge, with a local mindset.
