SecureCo’s Enterprise Voice for Cloud solution helps Localsearch’s 250 employees transition to remote work, while reducing risk and elevating the customer experience.
The Background
Managing over 700+ customer interactions is all in a day’s work for Aussie digital marketing service and business search platform, Localsearch. Founded on an ambition to provide their small business customers with “the absolute best experience every time you call us,” Localsearch’s team of 250 digital gurus across Australia.
The Challenge
Looking to improve their customer experience, CTO Gary Mandelkow commenced a review of the company’s telephony in early 2019. Localsearch’s outdated voice systems were quickly identified as an inhibitor to delivering extraordinary service for their 26,000+ customers. With digital experts engaging with customers within and outside Robina HQ, providing a premium, seamless experience across platforms was non-negotiable.
Following a decision to implement Genesys Cloud to power their contact centre platform, Gary and his team then opted to upgrade all telephony to enterprise-level SIP.
“After selecting Genesys Cloud, our due diligence quickly turned to the ‘enterprise voice solution vs BYO carrier’ decision,” explains Gary. “The team at Genesys were quick to recommend a trusted partner that was offering an emerging enterprise voice service, and they introduced us to SecureCo.” CTO, Gary Mandelkow
The Solution
Partnering with SecureCo meant Localsearch would avoid the installation of any hardware: the end-to-end voice infrastructure is externally managed and entirely cloud-based. It also meant Localsearch’s business continuity plan wouldn’t involve any manual network changes.
“To cut a long story short, we went with SecureCo’s Enterprise Voice for Cloud solution and have never looked back. One of the key reasons I decided on SecureCo was their suite of call centre solutions. We knew it would not be a significant step for us to add-on SecureCo’s PCI DSS offerings.” CTO, Gary Mandelkow
By December 2019, SecureCo was appointed and implementation was underway; as scheduled, go-live was achieved in the last week of March 2020. With COVID-19 prompting nation-wide lockdown restrictions just one week later, Localsearch’s upgrade to SecureCo’s solution would prove a pivotal decision in the company’s COVID-19 response.
Navigating the New Normal
Pandemic-induced changes in workplace practices signalled the end of the daily office commute across urban Australia by the end of March. Overnight, Localsearch’s contact centre team and remote salesforce found themselves working from home – and more reliant than ever on stable telephony. While the crisis temporarily disrupted work routines, it also underscored the scalability and flexibility of the new solution. Responding to the needs of Localsearch’s newly distributed workforce, SecureCo accelerated the implementation and transition process: what would typically take six months was completed in just two weeks. As Localsearch’s customer service team adjusted to working under lockdown restrictions, they also found themselves managing a significant surge in call volumes as a result of their customers navigating COVID-19 restrictions and changes in business conditions. Throughout March and into April call rates doubled and then almost tripled.
The Outcome
To meet demand, Localsearch expanded its telephony user base by 50% with an additional 60 representatives, all of whom were seamlessly onboarded to the new SecureCo solution. Team members could focus on customer outcomes, knowing the voice technology would just work, irrespective of their location.
Mission-critical Voice Services
Throughout this period of unprecedented levels of customer support and disruption to the work environment, Localsearch’s team handled thousands of customer interactions, without a single dropped call. Localsearch’s contact centre representatives and sales agents are able to rely on seamless, enterprisegrade technology to connect with their customers and deliver on their promise of “the absolute best experience every time you call us.” As call volumes stabilised and Localsearch’s operations settled into the “new normal”, Gary and his team scaled down the voice capacity as required, reducing costs – knowing the solution’s elasticity allows them to ramp back up instantly, if needed.