Kathy Gibson reports from Gitex – Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will soon be able to choose from a bouquet of managed customer experience services.
Startek, a global customer experience solutions and insights leader, today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Avaya to partner on delivering what chief digital officer Abhinandan Jain describes as “customer experience in a box” solutions for SMEs.
The two companies have been partnering for the last 15 years, and the new MoU is an extension of the existing relationship.
“As we move out of the pandemic era, SMEs – which were the companies hardest hit over the last couple of years – are looking to digitalise more,” Jain says.
“We know that businesses that have digitally transformed their services have a better chance of successfully weathering disruption.
“So we saw an opportunity to help them by delivering customer experience in a box.”
The envisaged solutions will leverage the Avaya platform, with Startek bringing the people and processes, along with its expertise and experience in outsourced communications.
“We will bring the full solution together and offer its as a very simplified buying experience for SMEs,” Jain explains.
“This is great news for businesses looking to scale, pivot or expand, because they will be able to focus on what’s important to them – running their business – while we take care of the customer experience for them.”
The managed service is in the cloud, so companies don’t have to invest in technology upfront. They can simply choose a bundled offer, and pay for what they use.
The new offering is based on Avaya’s contact centre as a service (CCaaS) platform, so its immediately available and scalable. It also takes care of privacy and security, and ensures that engagements are compliant with and local regulations.
Jain believes this offering will be particularly relevant for the African and South African market.
“We already have 2 000 people on the ground in South Africa, looking after customer experience for one of the telcos,” he explains. “So we already have a good understanding of local conditions and culture.”
The new offerings will be targeted more to the mid-market and SMEs, designed to make it simpler for them to engage with their customers.
“We have seen customers have made the shift to software as a service (SaaS), so we believe there are ready to move to a package customer experience as a service offering.”
The solution is aimed at smaller companies, with between 50 and 200 agents, but Startek believes the real value it brings is being able to grow with its customers, enabling a consistent level of service.
The customer experience in a box offering will be taken to market by Startek and through Avaya’s partner network across all the regions it operates in.
Abhinandan Jain, chief data officer or Startek, with Nidal Abou-Ltaif, president of Avaya International