Businesses have long favoured email and SMS for customer interactions. However, the quest for achieving omnichannel engagement has seen many rush to adopt a slew of Over-the-Top (OTT) messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. This eagerness to go ‘all-in’ on omnichannel can sometimes lead to businesses neglecting the importance of the humble, traditional […]
As a cloud communications provider that empowers businesses to build seamless customer experiences, building our own cloud contact centre was always something in the pipeline.
As a rapidly growing section of the ‘as a service’ technology model, it was something we knew enterprise businesses were looking for. However, in the past couple of years, the market and our customers’ needs changed so swiftly that we had to react fast to capture the opportunity.
Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of the Toku Contact Centre.
But how did we get here? And what did we do differently?
>> Read the press release >>
Remote, office, and hybrid
2020 changed a lot of things. But in the business world, it changed the way we work
and communicate forever. In APAC, before 2020, working from home in many places
was rare. Now, nearly 43% of people find themselves in a hybrid work
arrangement.
This has created a huge challenge for businesses that rely on an on-premise model, and a real push for communications providers to create and offer a hybrid work-friendly alternative.
Meeting the demand
Fast-growing enterprises are everywhere in APAC. Growing pains are common, and expansion into new markets is difficult. Since we opened for business, we’ve been helping our customers overcome these hurdles but with the increase in remote working, they needed more help with the contact centre, the essential line of communication between companies and their customers.
What our customers found was that rapid growth was putting huge pressure on their contact centre and customer experience, something that companies are investing in rapidly to improve their bottom line. So, we had to make sure that demand was met when building our solution.
Making it bespoke
Every business is different. Rate of growth, market coverage, peak business times; the list of variables is never-ending. So, when it came to creating a Contact
Centre as a Service (CCaaS), we wanted something that was flexible enough to accommodate all these variables, and scalable enough so that it fits their business as it grows or changes.
We decided on a bespoke approach that fit the needs of our enterprise customers. Working with foodpanda for instance meant launching a contact centre solution in over 10 APAC countries and onboarding more than 10,000 agents in three months. No small feat, and one that only a bespoke approach could solve.
We realised that regardless of the complexities involved in setting up a large enterprise contact centre, our bespoke approach and close partnership teamwork with customers would deliver the best results.
Carrier-grade APAC connectivity
APAC is a tough nut to crack for a lot of businesses. Unlike Europe or the US, telco regulations are inconsistent, complex, and require plenty of legalese. Thankfully Toku has years of expertise navigating this complexity under its belt. Not only that but we managed to acquire two new operator licenses (Malaysia & Vietnam) to expand our network offering while developing a whole new product. This means that users of the contact centre have access to native connectivity in 16 APAC countries, with virtual numbers everywhere else.
Tailored for enterprise
One thing we’ve been constantly striving to add to recently is the benefits our contact centre provides. Development work can be tough, and for bigger contact centre providers, adapting to meet the capability needs of individual customers can be impossible.
For Toku however, we embraced the challenge, worked with our enterprise clients, and on top of standard features, made sure the platform had all the functionalities they needed to deliver an optimal customer experience.
Functionalities like:
- Omnichannel communications to address the growing customer demand for multiple ways to talk with brands
- Multi-tenant administration so businesses with dispersed agents in different portions of the org can have control and oversight on their operations
- Communication API enhancement so that clients can embed communication channels in their app and empower agents with important insights into customer activity
- Automation is something we’re constantly working on, with our most recent addition being Speech Transcribe and Sentiment Analysis, for real-time data on customer mood
Not only has this bespoke approach left us with happy clients and left them with even happier end-users, but it has given us a robust platform to start building the contact centre of the future.
What’s next?
Well, the Toku team is going to keep pushing out new features, expand our network, and strengthen our security. We’ll be at the forefront of helping businesses operating in APAC engage with their customers and make every conversation a seamless experience.