UCaaS and CCaaS Join Together with Brightlink at CCW

We discuss omnichannel experience with Brightlink at Customer Contact Week

5
JoeWhiteBrightlinkCCW
Contact Centre

Published: July 16, 2018

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Ever since the contact centre began, companies have been looking for ways to streamline and improve the customer experience. The less time an agent spends on a call, the more efficient a contact centre becomes. Combine that with the fact that experience is the most important differentiator in the modern world, and it’s easy to see why the call centre discussion is so important.

For almost eighteen years now, the Customer Contact Week event has been looking at the latest technology and innovations in the customer service space to support companies around the globe. I was lucky enough to physically attend the event at Las Vegas this year, alongside thousands of other attendees looking for ways to boost their contact centre solution. While I was there, I caught up with Joe White, the CTO of Brightlink – a leading solution provider and carrier that enables contact centers with voice, data and messaging capabilities.

Tell Us About Brightlink – What Can You Do?

As mentioned above, Brightlink is a communications solution provider that also offers a leading data messaging network and voice platform. This is a company that aims to offer customers a true and immersive alternative to using some of the bigger traditional carriers for voice and messaging, whose offerings don’t include the same level of rich features and quality of service. For instance, Joe told me that Brightlink has a product called “LiveView®,” which allows people to look at the traffic in their network as another set of key data points for optimising their contact center operations around call quality and delivery.

“We give our customers a chance to look at the traffic inside our network, see the trends that are happening over time that may impact the customer experience – any instances of packet loss, and if there’s something they might need to change. Customers can even set specific alerts.”

When Brightlink was founded in 2009, it began as a traditional wholesale carrier, designed to support other large carriers in the space. However, the company quickly began to scale, and grow a network that’s still expanding in the US. “We also plan on building a data centre in London this year, and we’re moving into APAC in 2019.”

Tell us About Your Messaging Option

Brightlink has a diverse range of top tier customers all the way from carriers to enterprises, and its offerings range from SIP Trunking to applications and services built on their leading IP-based platform, such as messaging. Brightlink is also unique in that its communication service offerings are designed for turnkey delivery either direct to customers or via channels.

“We’re thinking about how channel partners can sell these products from the inception of development. They can use the SIP trunk, or they can use our hosted PBX platform.”

Essentially, Brightlink provides their hosted PBX as a unique and simple UCaaS offering: “We’re giving customers a frictionless way to move into the /unified-communications/ucaas space. Resellers can now have a product to offer when bidding on a customer’s voice environment without having to bring someone else in.”

What Are you Showing at CCW Right Now?

While Brightlink were clearly demonstrating their entire range of capabilities at CCW, the particular focus was on the LiveView solution, the contact center platform, and the embedded voice origination and messaging capabilities that can be a complement to any contact centre solution, such as the 8xx NumberView solution, Joe told me: In addition to being able to manage contact center interactions,

“We think it’s really important for contact centres to understand what’s happening with their calls, why people are dropping out of queues and things like that. We want to make sure that the customer knows exactly what’s happening.”

Also important is the ability to enable a more holistic omnichannel experience with 8xx numbers and messaging.

As part of the software that they can add on top of their services, Brightlink has a contact centre module, which comes with call queues, skills-based routing, reporting and everything else built into the same platform. “It’s CCaaS and UCaaS together at the same price. We’re not just selling software, but the network that underpins it too.”

What Trends Do You See This Year?

As the contact centre space continues to evolve, I was interested to hear about the trends that Joe and Brightlink had seen throughout 2018. He told me that there’s been a lot more focus on messaging. “One of the products that we offer right now is MessageView, which is helping to give customers more of an insight into intelligent messaging. A lot of platforms allow you to send and receive text messages, but they don’t give you real value from it.”

The message system offered by Brightlink comes with auto-replies, and suggestions based on previous conversations, thanks to its built-in AI bot which provides insights in real time. Customers can also access auto-responders as well for their messaging campaigns and achieve an almost IVR-type interaction through texting.

Joe noted that at CCW this year, the conversation has been all about making the customer experience better, with fewer touchpoints and faster resolutions.

“We think that monitoring the call quality is important for that. If you can track call quality and make the most of your interactions with customers, that’s crucial. Additionally, it’s also about the omnichannel approach – having meaningful interactions through viable alternative channels.”

All of the numbers available through Brightlink are automatically SMS enabled and able to receive text messages.

What Does the Near Future Look Like for Brightlink?

In the immediate future, Brightlink will be continuing to enhance their product set. “We think we can drive additional value for our partners and customers through customised tool sets. Everything on our platform is driven by APIs, and that’s a big part of the future right now. It’s important for us to make sure that we’re ready for any direction our customer moves in.”

Everything in the customer contact experience seems to be heading in the “open” direction these days, and Brightlink believes that’s a positive thing. As Joe told me:

“We think this open approach keeps customers around for longer. We’re happy for them to mix and match with the Brightlink APIs that’re right for them, and we’re ready to migrate along with their technology choices.”

ChannelInteractive Voice Response
Featured

Share This Post