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MLB, Shield Companies boost engagement with Zoom CX
IT leaders from The Shield Companies and MLB discuss why they adopted the Zoom CX suite to scale operations, improve customer engagement and use AI for real-time insights.
Pest control firm The Shield Companies sought to pivot its customer engagement strategy away from a cause-and-effect approach to customer communication, where customers could call a hotline to schedule an appointment.
The company wanted to create a more engaging and empathetic customer experience (CX), where customers could quickly and directly contact their pest control specialist, said Jonathan Hypes, director of IT for The Shield Companies.
The company opted to deploy Zoom CX's suite, which includes cloud-based contact center, AI and workforce management platforms. Hypes spoke at the Zoomtopia user conference with other IT leaders on the decision to deploy Zoom CX.
Hypes said his company originally had a legacy PBX phone system, which can be more complicated to set up and manage. Over the last two years, The Shield Companies expanded from 34 to 59 branch locations and needed a phone system that was flexible and could easily scale with the company.
"That shift has been radically helpful for improving our customer satisfaction, improving our agent satisfaction and making everybody a little happier to work with on a daily basis," he said.
Platform simplicity drives engagement
Neil Boland, chief information security officer for Major League Baseball (MLB), echoed Hypes' sentiment about the importance of engagement and connection with customers. Baseball is a live product, where customers are connected at the ballpark and at home, he said.
"We never want there to be an issue with that connectivity," he said. "Live products are tricky; there's no margin for error."
The priority is that customer needs are met quickly, because every minute customers are on the phone or on a video call with an agent is a minute they're away from the game, Boland said.
The Zoom CX suite enabled MLB to engage with customers the way customers prefer. An additional benefit is that Zoom is a familiar platform for both agents and customers, which increases the chances of engagement success, Boland said.
That familiarity also made it easier to introduce and set up the platform at local MLB clubs, he said. Most clubs were able to deploy Zoom CX with minimal training.
AI capabilities aid agent performance
The Shields Companies has started using the Zoom AI Expert Assist capability to connect to its knowledge base, Hypes said. AI Expert Assist provides agents with real-time customer information, relevant knowledge base articles and personalized recommendations.
But Hypes cautioned that it's important to ensure a clean data set to remove inaccurate or irrelevant information before training the AI.
"When we did our initial deployment, we absolutely stubbed our toes pretty hard, pretty quick," he said. Ultimately, the team chose to disconnect the AI Expert Assist, update knowledge base articles and then reconnect to the AI tool. Now, the AI is proposing helpful scripts as agents converse with customers, he said.
The AI tool can detect if a call isn't going well and provide the agent with guidance to improve the call experience. Alternatively, the AI can determine if a call is going well and identify upselling opportunities, like buying a jersey, Boland said.
"You have a little AI angel on your shoulder," he said. It also decreases the need to escalate calls to a supervisor or listen to calls to resolve the issue, he said.
"Now you're just driven right to what you have to pay attention to in managing an operation like this," Boland said.
Katherine Finnell is senior site editor for Informa TechTarget's unified communications site. She writes and edits articles on a variety of business communications technology topics, including unified communications as a service, video conferencing and collaboration.
