Deploying RingCentral MVP and RingCentral Live Reports for the newly established EnerSys ANZ customer care team has been a test case for the Asia-Pacific region for this leading global producer and supplier of stored energy solutions.
“RingCentral has already transformed our customer service. We now have queues and call flows, and proper management and reporting for our national 1300 and 1800 numbers, which our customer care team can continue to develop and refine as we add new capabilities and functionality,” said Michael Dang, IT Management ANZ, EnerSys.
In addition to consolidating telephony across the organisation’s manufacturing plants and offices in Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, advanced reporting through RingCentral Live Reports is already helping the newly established customer care team to start tracking against key calling metrics and KPIs. The plan is for EnerSys to introduce more advanced functionality with the implementation of RingCentral Contact Centre and integration with its core CRM platform Salesforce.com later in 2022.
In 2015, EnerSys acquired Melbourne-based ICS Industries in Australia and New Zealand extending its energy solutions to shelters and enclosures to protect critical equipment including electronics and telecommunications infrastructure, with clients including Bureau of Meteorology, NBN Co, BHP, Rio Tinto, Vodafone, Optus and Telstra.
However, that meant EnerSys was managing multiple on-premise PABX systems and multiple telecommunications and support service provider contracts. While EnerSys advertised national 1800 numbers in Australia for customer service (such as its NBN™ backup battery replacement program) it was difficult for EnerSys to ensure a positive customer experience with no visibility or reporting on calls and no national telephony queue or IVR system in place.
A focus on improving the customer experience and the imminent shutdown of PSTN services in Australia were the catalysts for change for EnerSys. Following the lead of its global operations, EnerSys explored the market alternatives for a cloud-based telephony and integrated customer care solution that would provide centralised operations and ease of management. The solution also had to integrate easily with both EnerSys’ Microsoft Teams environment and Salesforce.com.
A RingCentral solution was recommended by leading APAC systems integrator CCNA.
“The recommendation from CCNA was a great one; RingCentral ticked all the boxes,” said Dang.
“It offered us tight integration with Microsoft Teams, which we had already been using across the business for the past three years, advanced PABX functionality, and operation on an integrated platform when we were ready to implement a full contact centre for our newly-formed national customer care team.”
For the first time in ANZ, EnerSys now has visibility and centralised control of communications across its entire operations at all locations and for more than 160 staff members.
The key advantage of RingCentral MVP was its native integration with Microsoft Teams, allowing EnerSys to embed telephony functionality into its Teams interface and avoid any added complexity for its staff. The same functionality extended to the Teams mobile app, so users were already familiar and comfortable using the same interface across their different devices.
“Our New Zealand team is now just one click away,” explained Dang.
The telephony upgrade also gave EnerSys the opportunity to dispense with physical handsets, reducing its overall hardware footprint.
That meant a subsequent major office move in NSW over the summer was very simple from a telephony perspective.
“We just had to move our users, and that was it,” said Dang.
From an administrative perspective, EnerSys now receives just one monthly itemised invoice for ANZ telephony, rather than the multiple invoices it was receiving from its different telco and support services providers. Also, telephony platform management can be completed in-house.
Other regional EnerSys operations are watching with interest as the ANZ business benefits from its RingCentral solution, particularly the positive impact it is having on customer experience.
“With RingCentral, we are showcasing to our other regions how you can build a world-class customer care team,” Dang concluded.
Originally published 11 May, 2022
