With fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, changing economic conditions, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, it's a challenging but exciting time for the UK's retail sector, and technology has a key role to play. In particular, advances in IT and networking solutions are empowering retailers to enhance their operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and retain their competitive edge in an increasingly online and interconnected world.
Although digital transformation amongst Legal firms has typically been comparatively slow compared to other sectors, the journey has picked up speed over the course of the last decade.
The nature of AEC projects and the high volumes of sensitive data firms generate, transfer, and store on a daily basis make them a natural target for cyber criminals. Indeed, a recent Government study found that 5% of building firms have already fallen victim to some form of cyber-crime in the just a year, but that 26% of them still did not have adequate cyber security measures in place.
Exponential-e today announced its partnership with Five9, the leading provider of the Intelligent CX Platform. The collaboration will mark the next stage in the evolution of Exponential-e's UC and CC solution portfolios, providing their teams with the means to design and deliver customer service transformation for clients. This, in turn, will help establish the new breed of contact centre as a critical part of delivering exceptional customer experiences in the new age of rapidly evolving AI technology.
The Five9 intelligent CX platform facilitates billions of call minutes annually, and provides digital engagement, analytics, workflow automation, workforce optimisation, and practical AI to create more human customer experiences, engage and empower contact center agents, and deliver tangible business results. Along with our people and the relationships they bring to our customer engagements, that is what creates our true CX difference.
As the ways in which we communicate and collaborate continue to evolve, the contact centre has become the focal point of many organisations' customer communication strategies. Exponential-e is working closely with a range of organisations across the private and public sectors to accelerate this journey, designing and delivering solutions that optimize the customer journey across every channel - empowering agents to deliver exceptional outcomes, while ensuring productivity and wellbeing are maintained.
Crucially Exponential-e and Five9 share a number of common values, including a focus on reliability, security, innovation, a commitment to service excellence, all delivered through a consultative approach.
The Five9 platform has a key role to play in this journey, providing Exponential-e's own specialists with a range of leading-edge tools to support modern organisations' increasingly sophisticated CX requirements.
Customer service has always been part of our company DNA, and partnering with Five9 was simply a logical next step. When we combine these tools with the right people and processes, I expect the results to be genuinely transformative for our customers, and their customers in turn.
Gareth Hayes
Head of UC & CX, Exponential-e.
Exponential-e's commitment to customer service has always stood out for us, and we're delighted to be partnering with them - not just to explore the full potential of these new solutions, but to ensure the human element remains at the heart of every customer interaction.
Thomas John
VP International, Partner Sales, Five9
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Policymakers have now recognised that world-class digital connectivity and fast internet connections are as essential to the future of the society now as ports, railways, airports, and highways were throughout the last two centuries. Those systems transformed the way people lived and worked, irrevocably changing human conceptions of distance, speed, and time.
Achieving successful digital transformation across the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Sector.
New technologies are transforming every aspect of how projects are brought from conception to completion across the AEC sector. As a result, numerous leaders across the sector are accelerating their digital transformation plans, embracing the Cloud, AI, big data, and IoT in order to both overcome their immediate challenges and bring their long-term business goals closer.
There's no doubt that the current economic environment has led to feelings of instability, in both our personal and professional lives. Consumers are feeling the pinch, and with rising inflation and interest rates, they will have no choice but to curtail their spending. The impact on business is similarly far-reaching. Aside from the economic impact of the reduction in spending, there is the very real situation that both employees and customers will be experiencing stress in their personal lives. As a result, many organisations across the public and private sectors are evaluating how to best maintain their service quality under these difficult circumstances.
We've probably all encountered what we consider to be poor customer service through a contact centre, whether it's calling your utilities provider, banking, mortgages, or just everyday online shopping.
There have been many excuses for poor service through the pandemic due to ill-prepared home working solutions. Those should be behind us now, although that's likely the topic of a further blog, as many companies are still leaning on this excuse!
How Actionable Data Drives Sales, Improves Employee Satisfaction, and Enhances the Customer Experience
One of the key components we discuss with organisations when defining their contact centre needs is their data: the data the organisation requires, the data the solution can report on, and the tools available to interpret this data.
The turbulence of the current geopolitical situation has affected numerous sectors, who must not only consider how to protect their infrastructure from anticipated cyber-attacks, but also ensure that they are able to maintain business-as-usual as possible against a backdrop of global disruption to supply chains. As a sector that depends on the ready availability of materials, the UK's AEC sector has been particularly affected.
In light of numerous dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape in recent months, this blog has reiterated the need for organisations across all sectors to strengthen and - if necessary - reconsider their cyber security postures, in order to prepare for the anticipated attacks by global bad actors. The legal sector is no exception, particularly as these attacks are anticipated to specifically target the most high-value data.
Afshin Attari, Senior Director of Public Sector and Unified Platforms at Exponential-E, writes for Open Access Government, discussing digital pathology and the benefits this has for future healthcare. Read the article
Luke Armstrong, Enterprise Sales Consultant at Exponential-E writes for IBS Intelligence, discussing the importance of a secure Infrastructure system for both customers and employees within the Financial Services sector, as Hybrid working is fully established. Read the article
Enterprise Sales Consultant Luke Armstrong writes for Fintech, discussing how the Financial Services sector needed to adapt to the changes during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure a high level of network security for both remote and flexible working policies. Read the article
Suzette Bouzane Meadows, Contact Centre/UC lead consultant at Exponential-e comments to Networking+ on how firms need to ensure consumer confidentiality to remain in business following the concerns some contact centres have around IT Security now full-time remote working has returned. Read the article
Chief Innovation Officer at Exponential-E, Jonathan Bridges, speaks to E Week UK, discussing energy consumption within tech industries and how this may be affected by growing data and Innovations. Read the article
Exponential-e's Chief Innovation Office, Jonathan Bridges, writes for Intelligent CIO discussing the changes we expect to see in 2022 with future Innovations and the effects this may have on our green footprint. Read the article
